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!

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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?

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What day is Pi Day?

Today is Tuesday, Pi day (3/14)! Pi day is a national holiday celebrating mathematics, pi, and yes sometimes some baked pie and Pi-zza…

As 3/14 is a Tuesday, so are April 4, May 9, June 6, July 4, August 8, September 5, October 31, November 7, and December 26th!

Last year Pi day was on a Monday, the year before, a Saturday. Back in 2000, Pi day was Tuesday… Check out the math trick that lets you find the day of the week for various dates throughout history!: Check out James Grime’s full explanation of the trick:

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The Tic-Tac-Toe Magic Square trick

In Mathematics Magic and Mystery by Martin Gardner, the author presents an interesting card trick to create a magic square (where all rows and columns add to the same number), using an interesting interactive game with a participant. After playing a game of tic-tac-toe, your friends will be surprised to see they set up the cards in a 3×3 grid summing the number on the cards to 15!

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