This year the Bay Area Maker Faire was back after years of postponement! This was an enormous fair compared to others I had attended and included some very interesting exhibits:
Continue reading “Maker Faire Vallejo, CA 2023”Central Oregon Maker Fair Review
Earlier this month there were some interesting makers – music makers, robots, woodworking, taking things apart and putting things together – check out the video !
Continue reading “Central Oregon Maker Fair Review”Ideas for the Einstein Mad Hat contest
As you may have seen from Matt Parker’s latest video, there is a new contest for the recently discovered Hat and Spectre tiles! For more details about this recent discovery please see the MoMath article about this “ein stein” (a pun for “one stone” in German).
Continue reading “Ideas for the Einstein Mad Hat contest”Where are the big roofs for Solar? A mathematical look at pulling data from OpenStreetMap
In recent years there has been a lot of talk about solar and more renewable energy. In USA the recent IRA has provisions for extending solar and renewable energy, and the Florida governor last year supported Solar benefits which turn out to be helpful in many natural disasters, making an energy grid more easily self-sustainable after hurricanes that are common to that state. What if we could go over a map and see what buildings are the best candidates for solar generation? OpenStreetMap has not just street maps, but many other features, including building coordinates, which can give us polygons that can calculate areas for potential solar!
Continue reading “Where are the big roofs for Solar? A mathematical look at pulling data from OpenStreetMap”ChatGPT is bad at math? Turns out, so is Microsoft’s assistant.
Recently it was noted, by Arstechnica and others, that ChatGPT doesn’t seem to be great at math questions – recent tests have found one can get wrong answers much more often than a calculator, and even apologize if you insist that it is wrong (suggesting it doesn’t know math after 2021… lol). but what about other similar assistants?
Continue reading “ChatGPT is bad at math? Turns out, so is Microsoft’s assistant.”How to build your own ChatGPT-style chat bot
In recent months, new inventions like ChatGPT have been said to be possibly the end of society, or the saving of society… but maybe this is something that is something very similar to what has been hyped before?
Continue reading “How to build your own ChatGPT-style chat bot”de Bruijn sequence, security, and the surprising reason your phone requires pressing enter on the lock screen
de Bruijn sequences (also known as Ouroborean rings in Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, p. 44) are an interesting topic that have a surprising connection to moving across a square, and the security of most phone unlock screens. These sequences make a compact listing of all the possible values, in a repeating (cyclical) string of values.
Continue reading “de Bruijn sequence, security, and the surprising reason your phone requires pressing enter on the lock screen”SoME Math contest is back
The Summer of Math Exposition (run by 3blue1brown) contest is up and running: https://some.3b1b.co/
Continue reading “SoME Math contest is back”Computer efficiency numbers – useful rating or greenwashing?
In a recent newsletter, well known scientist Katherine Hayhoe mentioned a listing of the top most efficient computers – while efficiency is something to consider in your purchases, is there really a big difference in which laptop you buy and use?
Continue reading “Computer efficiency numbers – useful rating or greenwashing?”Belchou’s Aces – an oldie but a fun mathematical card trick!
In Mathematics Magic and Mystery by Martin Gardner, he describes a trick that was published in an earlier publication in 1939. This one is easy to set up and surprising, as you can have a friend run the whole trick with a few simple instructions, no sleight of hand! Here’s how it works:
Continue reading “Belchou’s Aces – an oldie but a fun mathematical card trick!”