Though the chart starts out in alphabetical order, there's a break in the pattern that offers a clue... Puzzling Like the Seventeenth Century Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) The following chart is taken from the second edition of a German-language arithmetic textbook by Anton Schultze. It was published in LiegnitzRead More →
You could pick up the torus and rotate it horizontally, as though you are taking the lid off of a jar of peanut butter... How to Untwist Your Fractions Diana Davis Phillips Exeter Academy A string around a bagel Here's the problem: your bagel has a torus knot wrapped aroundRead More →
The negative hypergeometric distribution isn’t labeled negative because it uses negative numbers. It’s negative because we’re thinking about failure… The Hypergeometric Flower Pot Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) I spent the hottest days of summer engrossed by Balatro, a video game cross between poker and solitaire that’s catnip for probabilityRead More →
The next time it's pouring rain and you're clinging to that umbrella like it's your most prized possession, take the opportunity to look up and see the beauty of the mathematics above you. Grasping the Math That's Over Your Head Jessica Sidman Amherst College Audrey St. John Mount Holyoke CollegeRead More →
The more logic puzzles you do, the more easily you parse the clues. Tackling statistical word problems is no different... Reading to Solve Sara Stoudt Bucknell University It’s summertime, and, at least for me, it’s prime time for nostalgia. Do you remember those logic puzzles you may have played asRead More →
The Greeks were wary of infinities of any kind, and nothing like an exact definition of 'ratio' was possible for them... Irrationality Tamed Bill Casselman University of British Columbia Not so long ago, the internet magazine Quanta posted an article titled "How the square root of two became a number".Read More →
We would like to clear out every room over time, but asking guests to leave seems rude. Instead, every day we assign them new rooms using a monotone increasing function… Primitive Recursion and the Disappearing Guests Bevin Maultsby NC State University Hilbert’s Hotel is a well-known thought experiment which challengesRead More →