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# Posts

### January 29, 2015

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The Stats on WordPress.com are a special favorite of many site owners — it’s our second-most visited screen. At a glance, you can see when you get the most traffic, which posts are making the biggest impact, who your most frequent commenters are, and more. It’s a great way to gain …
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The nice chaps at Kitki, an educational board game company based in India, have come up with a cool idea for a mathematical board game. They’re funding it through IndieGoGo (which if you haven’t heard of it is a bit like Kickstarter), and they’re looking for your help. The game, called Three Sticks, is based... Read more »
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1 + 2 + √9 = 1 + 5 Also: 1 + 2 = 9 - 1 - 5
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Once again, here are the multiple-choice problems with explanations for today's New York State Geometry Regents exam. Since I typed this up as quickly as I could, there are no images, graphs or diagrams included. I'll edit them as I am able to. A common theme: there were several questions involving the equation of a circle, as there always are, as well as several questions which not only involved the Pythagorean Theorem, but very specifically a 3-4-5 triangle or a multiple of it. I hope […]
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This post popped into our news queue just before Christmas, and was forgotten about thanks to the seasonal good cheer. Well, it’s 2015 now, and our Nonsense Formula Disapprove-o-Matic is beeping angrily. We still can’t muster up enough enthusiasm to properly dig into this, so I’ve just tidied up the links I collected earlier on. Eugenia Cheng... Read more »
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fouriestseries: Wave Equation The wave equation is a partial differential equation that describes the propagation of various types of waves. The equation appears throughout many fields in physics, including acoustics, fluid dynamics, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics. With some modifications, it can even describe the spread of traffic jams on busy highways! The one-dimensional equation was first discovered by d’Alembert in 1746 as he studied how vibrations propagated through a […]
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Hat tip to MatthewMaddux (Egan Chernoff) for passing along this entertaining video on 'what is math?' Some stuff gets oversimplified, but then it tries to pack a lot into just 7 minutes -- hope you're good at listening fast ;-)

### January 28, 2015

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Once again, here are the multiple-choice problems with explanations for today's New York State Geometry Regents exam. The open-ended problems will (most likely) appear tomorrow. Since I typed this up as quickly as I could, there are no images, graphs or diagrams included. I'll edit them as I am able to. A common theme: there were several questions involving the equation of a circle, as there always are, as well as several questions which not only involved the Pythagorean Theorem, but very […]
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Have a spectator roll 3 dice. Count out cards equal to the sum of the dice. Then remove the middle value die. From the smaller deck, count out cards equal to the sum of the remaining two dice and place the rest of the deck on top. Do this 3 times for the 3 dice […]
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A historical fact of 20 centuries ago led to a mathematical problem that still gives enough to talk: the Josephus problem. It combines recursive algorithms, permutations, modular arithmetics and the process of removing the elements of a set. (This post participates on the 119th edition of the Carnival de Mathematics, hosted by the blog White Group Mathematics.) FIRST HALF The coach of the Greenland's national team is very worried. Next weekend they play a decisive match to qualify for the […]
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|1 - (2 * 8)| = 15 Also: 12 - 8 + 1 = 5 Also: |1 + 2 - 8| = 1 * 5 Also: 1 + 2 = (8 * 1) - 5
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Yeah, yeah. I get it. You became a writer because you didn’t want to do math. You got into editing a general interest magazine, because you wouldn’t be required to remember the difference between mean and median. Or you decided to write novels, thanks to a horrific experience in your Math for English Majors class. […]
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To me, the very phrase “word problems” sounds bizarre. It’s like “food meals” or “page novels.” Continue reading →
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Each bus in Ottawa has a four digit number that identifies it (like 4476 above). One thing to do while riding, if you don't have a bus transfer to play with, is to pass the time factoring that bus identifier (it's also printed on the inside of the bus, in case you miss it getting in).We all know some basic divisibility rules to help with factoring: If it ends in a zero, it's divisible by 10, if it's even then its divisible by 2, if it ends in a 5 then it's divisible by 5. You may know that if […]
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This is the current installment of the monthly series “Game Theory in the News.” My hope is to highlight stories that can be used as case studies in the classroom, both so students can see how to apply game theory and so teachers can make class material easier to relate to. You can get these […]
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Welcome to this week’s Math Munch! Squares and circles are pretty different. Squares are boxy and have their feet firmly on the ground. Circles are round and like to roll all over the place. Since they’re so different, people have long tried to bridge the gap between squares and circles. There’s an ancient problem called “squaring […]
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itscolossal: Mathematically Precise Kinetic Sculptures and Transformable Objects by John Edmark

### January 27, 2015

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A student in my office was complaining about the 2015 version of SolidWorks and, in particular, about the new version’s tendency to place the origin of any 2D (or 3D) object in the lower corner, so that the entire object … Continue reading →
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Just before submitting my dissertation (when everything was 99% ready) I had to have a small holiday. This period was extremely stressful for me and not even Christmas was not 100% relaxing due to my project, thus this 3 days holiday was so welcome. As I have done in summer, I decided to share with […]
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12 - 7 = 1 * 5 Also: 1 - 2 + 7 = 1 + 5 Also: 1 + (2 * 7) = 15
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Marion […]
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On Super Bowl Sunday, millions of Americans will enjoy chicken wings while watching the big game. Chicken wings and sports go hand in hand, but there is a lesser known economic connection. The companies that sell buffalo wings and market sporting events employ a strategic principle that illustrates game theory. Game theory is a mathematical […]

### January 26, 2015

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As a woman, I know there is nothing more life-changing than giving birth to a child. It’s a time when you most need the support of people around you. You need encouragement. I had the pleasure of interviewing Audrey Kalman for this week’s Math at Work Monday. She’s been a birth doula for twelve years […]
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12 / 6 = √(|1 - 5|) Also: |1 - 2 + 6| = 1 * 5
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(via WikimediaCommons)It's a statistical Monday...:First, a bit about truth-in-advertising (Big Pharma style):http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=1....and as long as we're talking stats criticism (moving from pharma to psychology), here's another scathing overview via Deborah Mayo:http://tinyurl.com/ptnps4wFrom Nassim Taleb, this graphic has been getting passed around of late, a "genealogy" of the Black Swan/"fat-tails" problem (be sure to refer to the color coding key […]
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No summary available for this post.
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You have 100 units of fencing. What’s the largest area you can box off next to a river? And if you find this puzzle too easy, see if you can solve it in two different ways. . . . . M I N D . Y O U R . D E C I S […]
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sleepnaught: mathematics coloured like deep spacebuddhabrot 1/2

### January 25, 2015

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No summary available for this post.
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1 * √25 = 1 * 5 Also: |1 - 2 - 5 + 1| = 5