Base 10 only, and no funny stuff.
Archive | Mathematics
Math Puzzle
Consider the product 1! x 2! x 3! x … x 99! x 100! — a very big number, but that doesn’t faze us mathematicians (since you won’t need to multiply out in any event). The puzzle: Can you, by omitting exactly one of the factorials from the product, produce a perfect square? (For instance, […]
Is Zero Neither Even nor Odd?
Those who enjoyed the comments following this post here on the subject and then this one might also enjoy these comments, triggered by a Dec. 2, 2012 BBC article. My favorites: no..it is not part of even numbers for sure they are 2, 4, 6, 8,…… [EV: For sure!] it feels like an even number […]
Mathematics as Post-Modern (in a Particular and Actually Quite Helpful Way)
A few days ago, over the breakfast table, my 9-year-old tells me: Dad, I told a boy at school that any number to the power zero is one. He said that was idiotic. Indeed, I had told Ben earlier that any (nonzero) number to the power zero is one. I think I had even tried […]
Math Puzzle Solution
Yesterday, I posed this math puzzle: Treating “^” as meaning exponentiation, and treating the exponentiation chain as going on infinitely, solve for x: x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^…))))) = 2 Many people in the comments got the right answer — the square root of 2 — some people were unsure, so I thought I’d briefly blog a follow-up. Here’s […]
Fun Math Puzzle
Pretty easy, but I found it amusing. Treating “^” as meaning exponentiation, and treating the exponentiation chain as going on infinitely, solve for x: x^(x^(x^(x^(x^(x^…))))) = 2
“Fermat’s Dilemma”
I’m on a family trip, and will be blogging little if at all this week; but I had a chance to look at a New York Times op-ed titled “Is Algebra Necessary?” and thought it was worth passing along to see what our readers thought of it. My own quick reaction to the op-ed is […]
Football Math Puzzle
Say that the only point-scoring events in a football game are field goals (3 points) and touchdowns with one-point conversions (7 points). Some point totals cannot be scored in such a game — for instance, 1, 2, and 4. What is the highest integer point total that cannot be scored using just 3-pointers and 7-pointers? […]
Yow!
I was shocked at the number of people who took the view that 0 was neither even nor odd. (I was even more shocked by those who thought 0 was odd, and by those who thought 0 was both even and odd, but there were comparatively few of those.) Under every definition of even that […]
Is 0 Odd or Even?
I had discussed this before, but I thought it would be good to do a quick survey on this. Please note that this is not a trick question. Also please give what you seriously believe to be the correct answer; and please vote even if you think the answer is obvious. 0 is …(opinion)