I’m looking over, and revising the first quarter APstats schedule, and am beginning to think it may make your life a little less hectic if you do one more thing for class this weekend:
- read pp37-46 in Chapter 1, and do problems 1.2-1.6 even
So, if you see this, and have time to do get it done; I think it would be a great idea.
(This work and some more will be due on Wednesday in any case.)
The Unfinished Game by Keith Devlin
Please read this book before you arrive seventh period on Wednesday, August 25 (Room B201.) It is a good and gentle introduction to the essence of probability, which is the basis of statistics. Most everyone I know who has read it, also found it very enjoyable.
Several copies are available at local libraries (Lakewood, Cuyahoga, Cleveland) and many more are requestable from other Ohio libraries through these. Inexpensive used copies are available online. I just ordered three remaindered hardbacks for $10, which I will lend to students or donate to one of the libraries. If you have any trouble finding a copy, contact me as soon as possible.
New here ?? So, what exactly is MathLore News ??
(Explanation forthcoming!)
There is an interesting article in this weeks Science News.
If you get the chance, tell me what you think about it.
Today is Pi Day, in honor of the mathematical constant pi (π), an irrational number that begins 3.14 — like today’s date, March 14th or 3/14.
π is a letter of the Greek alphabet, and it’s the symbol for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. In other words, if a circle has a diameter of 10 inches, we could find out its circumference by multiplying 10 inches by π, and we’d find out that the circle with a 10-inch diameter has a circumference (or perimeter) of approximately 31.4159265. It can only ever be approximate — never exact — because π is an irrational number, meaning that it goes on forever without repeating or having patterns. Using powerful computers, π has been calculated in recent years into trillions of decimal places.
Pi Day began in 1988, started by a physicist named Larry Shaw. And just last year, in 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution designating today as National Pi Day.
Pi Day celebrations around the nation today involve eating dessert pies or pizza pies, throwing cream pies, and listening to lectures on the importance of the irrational number — sometimes all of these things occurring in unison.
There are legions of people worldwide devoted to memorizing π to as far as they can memorize it. And today around the world, there are π recitation contests. The world record, according to the Guinness Book, is currently held by Lu Chao, a grad student from China, who over the course of 24 hours and 4 minutes recited pi to the 67,890th decimal place without error.
To aid in the memorization of the never-ending, pattern-less number, people have written poetry and stories in a mnemonic called “Pilish,” which is a way of constrained writing “in which the number of letters in each successive word “spells out” the digits of π.” One of the earliest and best-known examples of it was a sentence by English physicist Sir James Jeans, who wrote: “How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!” ‘How’ has three letters, ‘I’ has one, “need” has four — so it forms 3.14, the start of π — and each successive word’s letter count represents the next digit in π.
Then, in 1996, a piphilologist (as these people are called), wrote a 3,834-digit Cadaeic Cadenza, which begins with a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”; every single word adheres to the constraints that render letter counts into accurate successive π digits.
Today’s article was excepted in toto, from the wonderful Writer’s Almanac.
A new semester, which many students use as a good time for a new start.
Math tests and new semesters must be changing everywhere, as this recent cartoon from The Wall Street Journal indicates.
I had mentioned in class that the great mathematician & magician Persi Diaconis describes our perception of coin-flipping as random, as more a measure of our clumsiness that some attribute of the coin.
Imagine my surprise when I heard an interview with him on one of my favorite radio programs.
Here’s a link to an extended version of the interview. Oh, and in case you’re curious, here’s what he looks like:
Make your own Platonically-solid twelve-sided twenty-ten calendar. Click here for the PDF. Print it on cardstock and follow the instructions.
Or, click here to customize your own edition. (You can even go wild with a rhombic dodecahedron.)
Happy New Year! Make every day count.
One of the earliest jobs for mathematicians was keeping track of the calendar. Anyone who could accurately predict the earliest time to plant and the latest time to harvest, keeping frost from destroying the harvest, was automatically affluent.
There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal this week about calendars. Perhaps you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.
The author (a stand-in for WSJ’s “Numbers Guy”) sends out a short note to subscribing numbers-enthusiasts every week…which is how I got my head’s up on the column.
FWIW, I would favor a calendar with thirteen 28-day months, and one totally “free day” which is not part of any week (two of these, in leap year).
Winter weather means more than sledding and snowmen. Now that it’s snowing, grab a magnifying glass and try snowflake hunting. Bullet rosettes, stellar plates and capped columns are just a few of the varieties of snow crystal you can find in your backyard. Do you think you can site all thirty-five types?
Kenneth Libbrecht, physicist at Caltech and snowflake expert, shared the secrets of the snowflake with Science Friday.
My man Albert once said:
“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
So here are some tools for your lifelong quest, in the hope that glimmers of wisdom are yours, early and often.
I saw these last night on the great Open Culture website, where it was the list-topper for their Best of 2009 compilation.
You may recall that Èvariste Galois and I share October 25th as a birthday.
Although my life lacks the drama of his, it was a treat to come across this video this morning. I hope you enjoy it too. Symmetry is reality’s best riddle.
