27 981 billets de blogs de mathématiques, de 2004 à aujourd'hui. ← billets récents
10 billets correspondants au filtre · page 1 / 1
This looks like a Rubik's Cube, but it's not: It seems that an open-cab truck filled to the brim with Rubik's Cubes hit a bump in the road, causing some of the cubes to spill out of the truck bed and onto the roadway. When, mere moments la…
Base two numerals can be awkward to compute with, and Roman numerals are even more awkward. But awkward is not the same as bad. Today I'll tell you about a truly awful numeral system—possibly the very worst ever proposed as a way of doing …
"Oh, it's just a trick thing." – Ben Ames Williams, Coconuts Here are six puzzles, some of them classics, that don't look much alike on the surface. After stating them, I'll give a hint about what they have in common. Then I'll present sol…
[Note to reader: This is a sequel to my widely-circulated 2021 essay "The Great Solar Bleed-Out Scam"; for the sake of readers who have forgotten or never read that earlier essay, I include it here.] April 1, 2021: Dr. Jeremiah Browne of N…
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. — Tom Lehrer, "New Math" I ask too many questions. A case in point is the time I lost out on a place I wanted to rent when I asked my potential future landlord one question too many ("Does the pond…
A few weeks ago I was minding my own business, peacefully reading a well-written and informative article about artificial intelligence, when I was ambushed by a passage in the article that aroused my pique. That's one of the pitfalls of kn…
I'm a great believer in low-tech math. I don't like to rely on things a computer tells me; what if there's a bug in the code? I prefer trusting things that I can check for myself. At the same time, I'm keenly aware of the limits of my imag…
As a member of the Advisory Council for the National Museum of Mathematics ("MoMath") over the past decade, I've had a number of unique opportunities, such as the thrilling chance to improve the Museum's datebase via my smartphone and watc…
In ordinary math, the infinite decimal .999... is defined to be the limit of the terminating decimals .9, .99, .999, ...; that is, it's defined to be the real number that the fractions 9/10, 99/100, 999/1000, ... approach in the ordinary s…
This past week I was saddened to learn of the death of mathematician and teacher David C. Kelly, the founder of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics program (HCSSiM). "Kelly", as everyone called him, had a huge impact not ju…
Actu