Many mathematicians enjoy puzzles – and digging in to interesting code. Simon’s Puzzle collection is an open source collection of puzzles that any mathematician would enjoy:
Continue reading “Puzzles – an open-source collection”Testing solutions to the 100-prisoners puzzle.
Both Matt Parker and the Youtube Veritasium channel have reviewed the surprising best practice for the 100 prisoners puzzle. The puzzle is a way to find a solution that will let the prisoners win with the most probability. If you have not seen this already please see the video here before some spoilers below.
Continue reading “Testing solutions to the 100-prisoners puzzle.”Optimal placements and unsolved math problems
Optimal placements and unsolved math problems are among the interesting problems discussed in the book, Tomorrow’s Math, Second Edition by C. Stanley Ogilvy. On chapter two, pg.23-24 he asks how a land’s defenses may be best defended by n defense stations on a disk shaped land area? They state it had known answers for n<6, and “a general solution seems remote at present”.
Continue reading “Optimal placements and unsolved math problems”Humboldt Math Festival – next Weekend!
If you live in USA, West Coast, this is something you won’t want to miss – after previous cancellations in 2020, this is up and running again, and will be Apr 2, 2022 this year. Check out the website for details: https://humboldtmathfestival.weebly.com/
Happy Pi Day 2022
Once again it is Pi day, a great time to make pie – or order a Pizza or Pie (check if your local restaurants have a special Pi day deal 🙂 )
This year Pi day comes on a Monday, which hasn’t happened since 2016! There are some interesting tricks to calculating what any given day of the week was, and I’ll leave you with a video that James Grime published with some math tricks for the day of the week for any given date:
Continue reading “Happy Pi Day 2022”Happy Twosday! and a Surprising Pi trick
In Ben Sparks’ video he shows a very interesting trick. On a decimal angle calculator run:
sin(1/5555)
If your calculator has more than the standard Ubuntu calculator’s digits of accuracy you could add even more repeating 5’s. The answer is approximately PI with extra zeros…
0.000003142
Since today is Twosday (2-22-2022 in any date format), here is a similar Tuesday math trick for the Python console:
from math import sin
sin(22/700000.0)
It is also .0003142… or approximately Pi!
Continue reading “Happy Twosday! and a Surprising Pi trick”Makerfaire is coming up!
The past 18 months or so have been somewhat different as far as availability of in person gatherings, meetups and Makerfairs, etc. but this year there are some changes for the better… If you are interested in Machine learning and computer-vision projects, come look at a couple demos at the booth at Central Oregon Maker Fair, Nov 13-15th!
Github Copilot Technical Preview Edition Review
If you have had the opportunity to be added to the Github Copilot preview, you may have seen the great new extension of auto complete they advertise – but is it all it claims to be?
Continue reading “Github Copilot Technical Preview Edition Review”Optical Illusions and Considering Minimal Examples to Explain
There is a very old “disappearing cyclist” puzzle, by Sam Loyd, you may have seen or seen a variation upon the theme. In Ben Sparks‘ video he gives a great overview:
Continue reading “Optical Illusions and Considering Minimal Examples to Explain”Matt Parker’s new Video on Math Beeing Interesting
In Matt Parker’s recent video he looks into some interesting properties of the shapes commonly found in nature in bee’s hives:
Continue reading “Matt Parker’s new Video on Math Beeing Interesting”