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Why you should be excited about Pi Day!
Read more: Why you should be excited about Pi Day!Star Wars geeks celebrate May the 4th, but today is for all of us, geeks and non-geeks alike! Allow my friend, Steven Francis, and me to convince you to celebrate Pi Day by consuming an irresponsible quantity of pizza or a responsible quantity of beer! Today’s date is March 14. On an American calendar, it…
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Don’t trust your intuition, part 3: Exponential growth
Read more: Don’t trust your intuition, part 3: Exponential growthThere is a widely clipped and shared video of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson asking the question: There is algae growing on a lake, you see that the area covered by the algae doubles every day. You go away for a month, come back and see that half of the area of the lake is covered…
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Using the Cartesian Plane to Understand the Symmetry of Native American Art Works
Read more: Using the Cartesian Plane to Understand the Symmetry of Native American Art WorksThe need to describe the position of a fly on his bedroom ceiling drove René Descartes to create the Cartesian plane. This invention can help us understand the symmetry in Native American Art work.
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Why Average is Great!
Read more: Why Average is Great!The concept of average is a very useful one. Those who understand it can make sense of the world. Those who don’t can be easily misled. What an average number means Say you are told that an NBA shooting guard has an average of 20 points per game for the 6 games he has played…
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What do mathematicians do?
Read more: What do mathematicians do?“What do mathematicians do?” This is a question I often get asked by my students. In this post, I will tell you the story of an eighteenth century mathematician who solved a problem and made the creation of Google possible! The citizens and their problem! The year was 1735 and the people of Königsberg, a…
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How many handshakes?
Read more: How many handshakes?Fifty people enter a room. If each wants to shake the hand of every other person once, how many handshakes will take place? This problem is a classic of mathematics and we will solve it with the help of some visuals.
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Don’t trust your intuition. Part 2: How to win a car on a game show?
Read more: Don’t trust your intuition. Part 2: How to win a car on a game show?The Monty Hall Problem is a problem that comes from a segment of the TV game show, Let’s Make a Deal, once hosted by presenter Monty Hall. The game, in its mathematically tidy version, goes like this: There are three closed doors. Behind one of them is a car. Behind the other two is a…
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Don’t trust your intuition. Part 1: How many batting lineups for a cricket team?
Read more: Don’t trust your intuition. Part 1: How many batting lineups for a cricket team?In the game of cricket, two teams take turns to bat or bowl. While only some players bowl, all eleven team members take part in batting. The bowling team aims to dismiss batters, one at a time, and the batting team sends out a replacement, in predetermined order, for each dismissed player. The order in…
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The Secret Mathematical Lives of Rabbits
Read more: The Secret Mathematical Lives of RabbitsIn 1202, an Italian mathematician, best known as Fibonacci, proposed the following problem: Table 1 below illustrates the development of the rabbit population in the first 6 months. The small rabbit pairs are ones that are less than a month old. We can see that, in February, we have the same original pair. It has…
Numbers for Words people is a blog that explains mathematics in plain language. The aim is to show the beauty of mathematics from first principles. For regular updates, subscribe by typing your email address in the box at the top of the page.