As summer reaches its midpoint, we come to the end of another rousing year of World Cup soccer. As with any international sporting event, fans all over the world have undoubtedly had their share of ups and downs. Of all the countries in this year’s tournament, however, I think Germany may be receiving the most attention, . . . → Read More: Let’s Make a Deal with Paul the Octopus
|
|||||
|
Last week, Slashdot posted an interesting link to a problem posed at the most recent Gathering 4 Gardner, a mathematical (or perhaps I should say mathemagical) convention created in honor of the late Martin Gardner. The question, posed by Gary Foshee, is as follows: you have a friend with two children, one of whom is a . . . → Read More: A New Birthday Problem I’ve previously discussed some mathematical approaches to dating. Specifically, we have seen how choosing a partner can be modeled as a type of secretary problem, and, if you like, you can estimate the number of candidates you should consider by using a modified Drake’s equation. However, as you know, building a lasting relationship is about more . . . → Read More: Love and Marriage Not long ago, I wrote an article in commemoration of Martin Gardner’s 95th birthday. Sadly, it seems this will be my last article in celebration of his birth, as he passed away late last month. Through his passing, though, his influence has become even more apparent. Perhaps because he published mathematical games in Scientific American for 25 . . . → Read More: RIP Martin Gardner I’d just like to take a moment to remember Jaime Escalante, who died today at the age of 79. I’ve talked about this East LA math teacher whose antics were given a national stage in the film Stand and Deliver before, and out of all the films I’ve seen that try to do justice to mathematics, . . . → Read More: RIP Mr. Escalante This morning my good friend Gabe of Motivated Grammar, who is secretly addicted to celebrity gossip, sent me this link to an article from Perez Hilton which is all about mathematics. No, I am not joking – Mr. Hilton apparently loves Grigori Perelman, the mathematician who solved the famous Poincaré conjecture and recently refused a $1 . . . → Read More: Math Really Goes Pop Last year, Professor Steven Strogatz of Cornell University wrote a series of op-eds for the New York Times that discussed the presence of mathematics in unlikely places. I discussed one of these columns here. Now, either those articles were well-received, or Professor Strogatz is well-connected, because this year he’s back in the Times with a . . . → Read More: Math in the News(paper) Some time ago, I wrote an article on the optimal way to select a mate, assuming you know how many eligible partners exist, and that once you’ve dated someone, you can’t go back and date them again (sorry, Drew Barrymore and that dude from the Apple commercials). This is less romantically known as the secretary problem. . . . → Read More: Finding Love with a Modified Drake’s Equation Late last year, a study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which tried to pin down origins for the gender gap in mathematics education. As I’ve discussed before, the gender gap in math education is shrinking, and has been shown to be less about biology and more about culture – in cultures . . . → Read More: Gender Gap Genesis In the aftermath of the Super Bowl, some of you fans may be dreading the next six months. To kick off this football drought, I’d like to highlight this article, which was featured on Yahoo yesterday. The article says that Saints quarterback Drew Brees should hope to lose the coin toss at the start of the . . . → Read More: Lying with Statistics in Football |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2010 Math Goes Pop! - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
