Math Trek
- Math
Song-and-Dance Fermat
The proof of a mathematical conjecture–even one as famous as Fermat’s last theorem–may sound like an improbable subject for an off-Broadway-style musical. Yet there’s plenty of drama and passion in the story of Fermat’s last theorem. These elements take center stage in Fermat’s Last Tango, a musical written by the husband-and-wife team Joshua Rosenblum and […]
- Math
Prime Spirals
Precisely defined yet enticingly elusive, prime numbers occupy a central place in number theory. Evenly divisible only by themselves and 1, these special integers–2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, and so on–pose all sorts of conundrums. In a square grid, numbering squares instead of line intersections serves as […]
- Math
Getting Clobbered
Clobber is a new two-person game that’s easy to learn and fun to play and, for the mathematically inclined, rife with analytical possibility. Initial placement of white and black stones on a 5 x 6 rectangular board. The “standard” game is played on a rectangular grid of squares–say, a portion of a checkerboard. One player […]
- Math
Tricky Dice Revisited
The game involves a set of four cubic dice, each one numbered differently. You let your opponent pick any one of the four dice. You choose one of the remaining three. Each player tosses his or her die, and the higher number wins. Amazingly, in a game involving 10 or more turns, you will nearly […]
- Math
Tricky Dice Revisited
The game involves a set of four cubic dice, each one numbered differently. You let your opponent pick any one of the four dice. You choose one of the remaining three. Each player tosses his or her die, and the higher number wins. Amazingly, in a game involving 10 or more turns, you will nearly […]
- Math
The EKG Sequence
Sequences of numbers have long fascinated both amateur and professional mathematicians. Many people are familiar with the Fibonacci sequence, in which each new term is the sum of the previous two terms: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, and so on. More than 69,000 other sequences of interest to mathematicians […]
- Math
Rainbow Randomness
The branch of pure mathematics known as Ramsey theory concerns the existence of highly regular patterns in sufficiently large sets of randomly selected objects, whether they are gatherings of people, piles of pebbles, stars in the night sky, or sequences of numbers generated by the throw of a die. Jacob Licht Patterns can arise out […]
- Math
Highway Relativity
There may be more to zipping along in the fast lane than meets the casual eye. Freeway drivers often sense that cars in an adjacent lane are moving faster than those in their own lane. That’s certainly true when the average speed of the cars in the next lane is significantly higher than that of […]
- Math
Highway Relativity
There may be more to zipping along in the fast lane than meets the casual eye. Freeway drivers often sense that cars in an adjacent lane are moving faster than those in their own lane. That’s certainly true when the average speed of the cars in the next lane is significantly higher than that of […]
- Math
Scrabble’s Random Letters
In the popular SCRABBLE Brand Crossword Game, players create words from letters selected at random from a stockpile of 100 tiles. The tiles are laid down on a board 15 squares high by 15 squares wide to form an interlocking, crossword arrangement. Each letter of the alphabet has a particular value and the number of […]
- Math
Scrabble’s Random Letters
In the popular SCRABBLE Brand Crossword Game, players create words from letters selected at random from a stockpile of 100 tiles. The tiles are laid down on a board 15 squares high by 15 squares wide to form an interlocking, crossword arrangement. Each letter of the alphabet has a particular value and the number of […]
- Math
Ice Cream Wars
A visit to the supermarket can present a shopper with a bewildering array of choices. For ice cream alone, the consumer faces a variety of brands, flavors, container sizes, and types (fat-free versus low-fat versus premium, and so on). At the same time, deciding which items to stock is a formidable problem for retailers. They […]
