I recently showed how to find the intersection between a line and a circle. While working on the problem, I was reminded of a fun mathematical game. Suppose you make a billiard table in the shape of a circle or an ellipse. What is the path for a ball at
Suppose you are creating a craft project for the Christmas holidays, and you want to choose a palette of Christmas colors to give it a cheery holiday appearance. You could use one of the many online collections of color palettes to choose a Christmas-themed palette. However, I didn't want to
In a previous article, I discussed a beautiful painting called "Phantom’s Shadow, 2018" by the Nigerian-born artist, Odili Donald Odita. I noted that if you overlay a 4 x 4 grid on the painting, then each cell contains a four-bladed pinwheel shape. The cells display rotations and reflections of the pinwheel. The
Art evokes an emotional response in the viewer, but sometimes art also evokes a cerebral response. When I see patterns and symmetries in art, I think about a related mathematical object or process. Recently, a Twitter user tweeted about a painting called "Phantom’s Shadow, 2018" by the Nigerian-born artist, Odili
Most games of skill are transitive. If Player A wins against Player B and Player B wins against Player C, then you expect Player A to win against Player C, should they play. Because of this, you can rank the players: A > B > C Interestingly, not all games
In the paper "Tips and Techniques for Using the Random-Number Generators in SAS" (Sarle and Wicklin, 2018), I discussed an example that uses the new STREAMREWIND subroutine in Base SAS 9.4M5. As its name implies, the STREAMREWIND subroutine rewinds a random number stream, essentially resetting the stream to the beginning.
What is this math good for, anyway? –Every student, everywhere I am a professional applied mathematician, yet many of the mathematical and statistical techniques that I use every day are not from advanced university courses but are based on simple ideas taught in high school or even in grade school.
It's time to celebrate Pi Day! Every year on March 14th (written 3/14 in the US), math-loving folks celebrate "all things pi-related" because 3.14 is the three-decimal approximation to the mathematical constant, π. Although children learn that pi is approximately 3.14159..., the actual definition of π is the ratio of
The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear! -Buddy in Elf In the Christmas movie Elf (2003), Jovie (played by Zooey Deschanel) must "spread Christmas cheer" to help Santa. She chooses to sing "Santa Claus is coming to town," and soon all of New
Last week I compared the overhand shuffle to the riffle shuffle. I used random operations to simulate both kinds of shuffles and then compared how well they mix cards. The article caused one my colleague and fellow blogger, Rob Pratt, to ask if I was familiar with a bit of
