Category Archives: Just for Fun

Glen Whitney @ RM!

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As I advertised over a month ago, Glen Whitney will be joining us on Friday, October 22 for a walking math tour of Rockville. I’m excited to hear what he has to say (and to steal all his good ideas!). If you’re a Calculus student, or if you’ve taken it, and you’re not yet signed up for the field trip, stop by my room and we’ll talk. There are currently four slots left.

Reposting some of the info:

Richard Montgomery High School will be hosting mathematician Glen Whitney on Friday, October 22. He will be doing a walking ‘math tour’ of downtown Rockville.

Glen is the executive director of the Mathematics Museum on Long Island NY. For more information about Glen, or about the math museum, here’s an article about him. Or, visit the math museum’s website.

And here’s the article that’s on the RM website.

 

10/10/10 @ 10:10

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Since this is a math blog,  I felt obliged to capitalize on today’s date. I’m sure everyone has noticed, like they do every year when 9/9/9 comes up or whatever else. But today is a bit more special, since 10 is our favorite base to work in. To celebrate powers of 10, head over to the Let’s Play Math blog to see lots of links and a video that will put you in the mood :-). Happy day!

Powerful Problem

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I love this problem. I love it because it seems so complicated at first, just because we don’t teach students how to attack problems like this in Algebra class. There aren’t any “traditional” methods of attacking it, just a little mathematical reasoning/logic. Here it is:

Solve \left(x^2-5x+5\right)^{\left(x^2-9x+20\right)}=1

And this is my new “super duper” problem which I post throughout the year on my board (I use a lot of the same problems each year). I first saw this problem at Messiah College where one of my professors shared it–either Dr. Phillippy or Dr. Brubaker, I can’t remember which.

So give it a try. It’s sure to delight you. My Precalculus class was sharp enough to solve it today in one period (albeit, while I was teaching about a completely different topic :-)).

First Week Fun

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It’s so good to be back. I love summer, but unlike Calvin, I always enjoy returning to the school year. And I really like getting to know all of my students.

Just for fun, here’s a problem I came up with today. It combines some nice Algebra 2/Precal skills, and provides a nice exercise in analysis of functions. No calculator needed. Feel free to give answers in the comments below. In fact, feel free to suggest other similar problems.

Find the range of f(x)=2^{x^2-4x+1}.

Summer Odds and Ends

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I promise I’ve been mathematically active this summer, despite my little blogging vacation (I do get the summers off, you know!). So, in one post, let me highlight some of the nice stuff I’ve seen around the web recently:

  • The left-handed boy problem. Another post by Dave Richeson (can you tell I’m a fan of his blog?). The post is inspired by this kind of probability question:

Given a randomly selected family that has two children, one of whom is a boy, what is the probability that the other is a boy?

The post is great, but the conversation in the comments is just as great. You’ll notice that I’m a heavy participant. I really liked thinking about this class of problem. It highlights some of the most treacherous territory in mathematics, probability theory. I’ll probably end up devoting an entire post to this topic sometime in the future.

  • P ≠ NP. The Math Less Traveled blog hosted this announcement of a possible proof that P ≠ NP, by Vinay Deolalikar. It’s a Clay Mathematics Institute Millennium Problem, which has a $1 million prize attached to its (vetted) solution. Unfortunately, fatal flaws have already been found. Oh well. So it’s still an open problem and perhaps one of my students will solve it someday!
  • Stars and Stripes. Slate.com has a fun US flag generator, given any almost number of stars between 1 and 100. It’s great fun to play with the little interactive flag. And the task might provide you countless hours of entertainment, coming up with these arrangements on your own, without its help. A mathematician developed this, so that makes it appropriate for this blog :-).

And now for a bunch of books I read this summer which are all good, all of which I recommend.

  • The Mathematical Universe, by William Dunham. It’s not new, I know. But I finally finished reading it this summer and I highly recommend it. I love his lighthearted tone and all the wonderful anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book. It’s the perfect mix of fascinating history and little mathematical facts & puzzles that will make you hungry for more! Feel free to come and borrow it from me.
  • Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s not purely mathematical–I call these books “pop research” books. Very good read. Tons of great tidbits that you can bring up in conversation, sure to fascinate your next dinner guests.
  • Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dunbar. Another book that’s not really new but that I’ve only recently read. It’s also a “pop research” book–mind candy, if you will.
  • Godel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.  Actually, I’m only half way through this book. But I can already tell you it’s absolutely classic; truly brilliant. Maybe someone will write another book, Godel, Escher, Bach, Hofstadter, someday. Citing books within books would be the kind of recursion that Hofstadter loves. Can’t wait to finish the book…I’m sure to post about again later, and in more detail.

An island on an island on an island

Happy Last Day of School!!

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Honestly, I wouldn’t mind year-round schooling. I really like teaching, I really like math, and I really like my students. But, it’s also nice to do some traveling, get some projects done around the house, and catch up on reading, too.

To all my students, HAVE A GREAT SUMMER! And we’ll see you in the fall. Seniors, come back and visit often, okay?