Martin Gardner and the Three Way Duel
As you may have heard, last week Martin Gardner celebrated his 95th birthday. Gardner, who authored the "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American for a quarter of a century, is often credited for introducing generations of young students to the beauty and charm inherent in mathematics. My favorite quote in this vein comes from professor Ron Graham, who is quoted in a recent New York Times article on Gardner as saying that "Martin has turned thousands of children into mathematicians, and thousands of mathematicians into children."
A warm brain is the key to mathematical dexterity.
Both Scientific American and Wired ran articles on Gardner last week, and each one used a different expression to represent his age. Scientific American congratulated him on reaching an age of 25 × 3 - 1, while Wired proclaimed that Gardner had turned 5! - 25. Upon reflection I think I prefer the latter expression over the former, since the exclamation point in the factorial makes his birthday...
Math Goes Trick Or Treating Again
UPDATE: 2010 costume ideas can be found here!
Around this time last year, I wrote up some suggestions for math-themed Halloween costumes. Based on the traffic I received from that article, I can tell that many people are desperate to integrate their holiday festivities with mathematics. For this reason, and in the interest of not breaking tradition, I thought it would be fitting to suggest a few more ideas for this year.
1) Mathemagician.
In the strictest sense, a mathemagician is simply a mathematician who does magic. Or, perhaps it is a magician who does mathematics. You may (rightfully) be tempted to say that every mathematician does magic, but the tricks of the mathemagician are geared more towards a general audience, although they do often feature mathematics in a starring role. Sadly, the same cannot always be said for the typical magician.
There are examples of mathemagicians in real life, including Arthur Benjamin, who has been the subject of an earlier article (unfortunately...
More on Football Pools
Update: Part 3 of this series of posts can now be found here.
This post is a follow-up to an earlier post that looked at betting squares for football scores. In particular, we analyzed the distribution of the second digit of final football scores, and compared that to the digital root of final football scores (recall that the digital root of a number is found by iteratively calculating the sum of the digits in that number until you come up with a single digit number from 1 through 9). We found that on average, the final digits of football scores do not distribute themselves evenly - a score ending in 2 or 5 is much rarer than a score ending in 7 or 0, for example. However, the analysis of the digital root suggested that digital roots may become evenly distributed on average.
We now turn to a related question of independence, which was mentioned at the end of the previous post. More specifically, we address the following question: is the second digit of the home team's football...
Math on TV: Halls Refresh
If you've watched any television recently, you may have noticed the following ad for Halls Refresh. I strongly encourage you to watch it, even if you've seen it before, because it's basically fantastic.
A tremendous ad, to be sure. However, if you didn't watch closely, you may be wondering what such a sensual commercial has to do with mathematics. Watch again if you missed it - it may help to watch it full screen, although the quality gets muddy.
Did you catch it the second time? When the camera cuts to the Asian kid sitting at his desk, right before he starts to charm Mrs. Hunter, you'll notice that he has a poster on his wall filled with mathematics. There are 5 equations on the poster, but most are probably too difficult to make out from the Youtube copy. I was fortunate enough to see this ad on television, and after a few replays I made out 4 of the 5 equations. In order, they are as follows:
- x/x = xx.
- (10+x+xx)1/x/xx/41/x = x.
- (xx-1-1)1/x + tan(π/(x+1)) = x.
- This one I...
Reforming Education through Geek Chic
Earlier this month, Wired published an article written by Daniel Roth, enticingly titled "Making Geeks Cool Could Reform Education." It serves as an interesting counterpoint to the commonly used argument that the best way to reform education is to better integrate it with the most current technology, so that going to school feels less like going to school and more like playing video games (family friendly ones, of course).
Sorry, Typing of the Dead, but you're a little too creepy.
The essay in Wired takes a slightly different approach - it profiles schools that have successfully channeled the inner geeks of their students, the argument being that the geek subculture rewards intelligence with popularity. To do this, schools must make learning seem cool. This is a feat which is easier said than done, because, as we all know, there's no better way to convince a teenager that something is uncool than to repeatedly say how cool it is.
One way in which the schools were able to motivate...
Math in the Movies: Hodgepodge Edition
Most of the time I write about films where math takes a central role, but it is just as often the case that mathematics is at work in more of a supporting capacity. There are many examples of this phenomenon, even if we restrict our attention to movies that are fairly recent. To catalog each such instance would no doubt be fairly time consuming, but thankfully someone has already begun the task. It comforts me to know that I am not the only one who takes pleasure in seeing mathematics on the big screen.
Last week the Boston Globe ran an article that discusses the appearance of mathematics in a variety of recent films. In addition to mentioning the recent work on zombie dynamics, the article also discusses the link to mathematics as found in films like Casino Royale, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and The Dark Knight.
It's a short article and worth a read, but here are some highlights:
1. The ferry scene in The Dark Knight gives a modern twist on the classic Prisoner's...
Make Money Money, Make Money Money Money! (and Learn Math, too)
Let me begin by saying that, in response to the question Why is 9/09/09 so special?, my response is simple: it's not.
In fact, I would argue that 09/08/09 is much more interesting. This claim has nothing to do with numerology, and everything to do with President Obama's speech to the youth of America on the value of education. The speech made very clear the importance of taking education seriously, and hopefully convinced students that a good education benefits not only themselves, but also society at large. In case you missed the speech, the transcript can be found here.
Although the speech was about education in general, mathematics got a little bit of love too. Here's one such example:
What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and...
Comic (but not Comical) Mathematics
A few months ago, my girlfriend and I were persuaded to subscribe to the LA Times by a very nice man at a nearby Ralph's store who offered us $20 in groceries for the exchange. "Just try it out," he insisted, "because you can always cancel and we'll simply pro-rate the cost based on how long you were a subscriber."
Fantastic, we thought. Given the current uncertainty surrounding the future of the newspaper industry, subscribing made us feel like responsible citizens - like giving blood, but with fewer personal questions beforehand.
Unfortunately, once the newspaper began to arrive, we had to face the fact that we never read it. I think I skimmed through it a couple days that first week, but after that the papers would go from our doorstep to the recycling bin. Try as we might, we simply couldn't fit a morning newspaper routine into our lifestyle. And so, with a heavy heart, we canceled our subscription.
To be honest, I haven't really noticed a difference. All the news I need...
jAdis Needs Some Math Review
If you've ever gone for a walk down main street in Santa Monica, you may have passed by a store front filled with all kinds of paraphernalia. This is the home of jAdis, a museum of sorts, filled with props from TV and movie history, from a model of the robot in Metropolis to a spitting image of everyone's favorite crypt keeper.
Hey there good lookin'...
No doubt maintaining such a large collection of Tinseltown history is not necessarily an inexpensive endeavor - for this reason, there is a nominal fee for those wishing to enter jAdis and sift through its treasures. Unfortunately, it looks like someone forgot to double-check the pricing scheme.
I'm not sure who thought it would be a good idea to charge more per person if you have more than one person in your group, but something tells me this bold strategy may not pan out. Then again, I'm sure people just assume they are saving money by using the group rates. Maybe they meant to say that one person is $3 instead of $2 - this...
Math Gets Around: Preventing the Zombie Apocalypse
If pop culture has taught us anything, it is that in the event of a zombie outbreak, we are royally screwed. When faced with an onslaught of classical zombies (of the type first made famous by Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead), films have shown again and again that we are no match for hordes of cannibalistic undead. With the more recent interpretation of zombies that are faster and smarter, our hopes for survival have diminished even further.
Despite overwhelming odds, however, it is not in our nature to simply roll over in the face of adversity. While the body count is usually high in films chronicling the eventual war between the living and the dead, in most cases there are a few who survive to continue the fight after the credits roll.
But how realistic is this depiction? How prepared are we to defend ourselves from being eaten alive by our deceased ancestors? And what strategies will give us the best chance of survival? You'll be happy to know that mathematics...
Page 14 of 20