Secure Your Phone with Pretty Pictures
A good friend of mine is moving on up in the world, and to prove it, he recently upgraded his cell phone. His new phone is one of several that has a clever password feature - instead of entering a traditional password, one creates a shape within a 9 point grid, like a miniature connect the dots. Here's one video explaining the feature:
The rules for the patterns are fairly simple, but to make things crystal clear, let me label the dots in the grid as follows:
Here are the rules constraining the types of patterns you can make:
- The pattern must connect at least 4 dots.
- No dot may be used more than once.
- The order in which the dots are connected matters.
- Two dots which are on opposite sides of the grid (e.g. 1 and 9, 2 and 8, 1 and 3) cannot be connected together directly without going through the dot between them, unless the dot between them has already been used.
Do Not Trust the Meat Mathematics Institute
Friends, as many of you may have noticed, Burger King has begun a promotion for its BK Stacker line of cheeseburgers. The ad focuses on Burger King's Meat Mathematics Institute, where mathematicians from around the world gather to find ways to bring consumers a maximum amount of meat flavor for a minimum cost. Sadly, as of this writing, the ad is not available online, although this related video has made an appearance on YouTube.
While the institute seems like a delightful place to work, I regret to inform you that the research coming out of the institute is as bogus as the existence of the institute itself. The claimed solution to the problem of maximizing meat (or meat flavor, depending on your source) while minimizing cost is contained in the 3 BK Stackers. The Stacker family of burgers has three members, coming in at price points of $1, $2, and $3, respectively.
Right off the bat you should notice something problematic with their solution. If the aim is to optimize meat,...
Pi Day Post Mortem
Dessert aside, long-time readers are probably already aware of my decidedly mixed feelings towards Pi Day (see, for example, here). Nevertheless, the holiday seems only to be growing in popularity, and so I feel compelled to take it to task once again.
In my earlier post, I complained about mathematical mistakes that frequently appeared in Pi Day articles aimed at a general audience; these errors still exist, but rather than nitpick, let me instead focus on the most bothersome activity of the day. I'm speaking, of course, about π recitation competitions.
Reciting the digits of π is, unfortunately, becoming a popular activity - dare I say even a tradition - on Pi Day. Competitors recite as many digits of π as they can, and the person who can recite the most digits is declared the winner. As I've said before, I fail to see the point of this exercise. From a mathematical standpoint, students aren't learning anything while memorizing digits of π (although learning memorization techniques...
Female Math Role Models?
I've occasionally touched upon the gender gap in mathematics, mostly in response to some recent study that has attempted to explain why mathematics (and the sciences in general) are so predominately male. An article that appeared in Slate last week makes me think it is time, once again, to discuss this topic.
After giving a brief overview of the observed gender gap in science and math careers, writer Shankar Vedantam then discusses the results of some recent experiments out of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst which revealed new features of this gender gap.
In both experiments, researchers (roughly speaking) found correlations between the unconscious attitudes that females in a variety of scientific majors had towards mathematics and the gender of proctors and professors in mathematics. Among the findings (more details can be had by viewing the article):
- Given a question posed to the classroom by the professor, the percentage of female respondents decreased from 11...
Look, but don't Scratch
Ladies and gentlemen, please excuse my prolonged absence. Life occasionally has a habit of getting in the way of the schedule that I'd like to keep; in this case, it means I haven't been able to update over the past month. Fear not though, for now I have returned, and I am ready to dish on math and pop culture.
In that spirit, I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to mention this article from Wired last month on the man who cracked the code for several scratch lottery ticket games. Mohan Srivastiva, geological statistician by day and mathematical rogue by night, discovered a pattern in certain scratch lottery tickets back in 2003, but I'm sure (as this article suggests) he's received a bit more publicity since the Wired article hit.
I highly recommend reading the whole article, but I'll outline the gist of his discovery here. In order to do so, I'll need to specify a type of scratch game he cracked. The article focuses primarily on a tic-tac-toe themed scratcher shown below...
Math Clock Showdown
When shopping for gifts for someone, there are a few wells from which one frequently draws inspiration. A person's favorite TV show, for example, or favorite band; such preferences can often provide good fodder for gift ideas. One's career can also be included in this list - in my case, the result is that I am frequently the recipient of math-themed paraphernalia.
I've written before about my mixed feelings regarding math t-shirts. Today, though, I'd like to tackle a different type of gift: the math clock. This is inspired, in part, by a gift I received from my grandmother (bless her heart) over the holiday. The gift, pictured below, was an analog clock in which the numbers have been replaced by (what one would hope to be) mathematically equivalent expressions.
Figure 1: Clock with a black background.
Don't tell her, but we haven't yet put this clock up in our apartment. In my own defense, this is mostly because we already have a math clock displayed prominently in the kitchen...
Brief PSA
Hi everyone. This week is a little hectic for me, so I won't have time for a full-fledged post until probably this weekend. I thought I would take an opportunity to respond to this, though, since a few people have sent it my way. I'd just like to remind all mathematically-minded folks that our rep in this country is bad enough already, so please, let's all agree to not pee on our colleagues' office doors. In fact, I don't think it should be too hard to take it a step further, and actively remove ourselves from any situation in which someone could even reasonably accuse us of peeing on their door (office or otherwise).
Then again, maybe this guy was putting his own spin on the latest dance craze.
Test Taking, Part 3
If you'll permit me this small indulgence, gentle reader, this week I'd like to return to a topic from last month. More precisely, I'd like to continue the series of posts that discussed how one best ought to prepare for an exam in which all N questions are given beforehand, and one knows that M questions will appear on the exam, of which the student must answer K. In my first post I discussed this problem in the context of preparing essays, while in my second I discussed it in the context of preparing for the US citizenship exam.
Apparently I'm not the only one who thought this a worthwhile problem. This problem has also made an appearance at the fun-filled blog Mind Your Decisions (it's an excellent discussion, so if this kind of thing suits you, check it out). In the comments section, discussion on this problem continues; in particular, one person proposed that the model should be modified to include the possibility of guessing. This is an entirely reasonable thing to want,...
Lost Winnings
Last week, two very lucky people won the Mega Millions lottery jackpot (here's a profile on one of the winners). This particular lottery is played in 41 out of the 50 states, and these two individuals will share a combined, pre-tax total of $380 million.
But are they so lucky after all? Setting aside the common notion that winning the lottery can actually do you more harm than good, some people are concerned because of the numbers themselves that made the winning ticket.
The numbers drawn for this particular lottery were 4, 8, 15, 25, 47, and 42. Note that the last number is lower than the number that precedes it because it is the so-called "Mega Number," which is drawn from a different pool than the first five. For those of you with a penchant for televised dramas set in tropical locations, you may note that these numbers bear a striking similarity to Hurley's numbers from Lost.
As evidenced by the above image, Hurley's number's were 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42. In other words...
Watch Out for The Secret Number
I would like to offer my somewhat reserved congratulations to the helmers of the upcoming film project titled The Secret Number, whose Kickstarter project ended today having exceeded its fundraising goal of $10,000 (I'll also point out that this isn't the first time Kickstarter has made an appearance on this blog). The film, a senior thesis for director Colin Levy, is based on a short story of the same name, and is the reason behind my inclusion of the word "reserved" in the sentence above. By way of introduction, please take a look at the filmmakers' fundraising video:
As you can see, the story centers around a mathematician who claims to have discovered an integer between 3 and 4. Forgetting the mathematical particulars for a moment, the source material worries me, mostly because the mathematician featured in the story has been hospitalized following a nervous breakdown brought on by his work (if you have a chance, I'd encourage you to read the story for yourself - the whole...
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