Archive for October, 2007

Is it a triangle or a square?

Monday, October 8th, 2007

Purdue Professor of Computer Science Greg N. Fredrickson is an absolute master of geometric dissections, the art and science of cutting up one or more geometric shapes and rearranging the pieces to form other shapes. One example from Fredrickson’s web-site for his first book, Dissections: Plane & Fancy, is ...

Algebra help is just a click away

Monday, October 8th, 2007

www.algebra.com is a great free site for students needing help with their algebra homework. People who enjoy helping others with their algebra homework sign up as volunteer tutors. Students post their homework problems and the tutors answer them, ideally providing an explanation of how they got to the solution. Some months ...

Are U.S. area codes random?

Monday, October 8th, 2007

I had never given much thought to how area codes were selected. I always assumed they were random three digit numbers that, once upon a time, always had 0 or 1 as their middle digit. This morning I was browsing The Universal Book of Mathematics: From Abracadabra to Zeno’s Paradoxes ...

An invitation

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

Welcome! Do you love Math? Do you see beauty in mathematical ideas? Do you enjoy solving Math puzzles the way some people enjoy taking cars apart? Do you get lost in excursions, finding patterns and relationships among numbers, symbols, and concepts? Or, is Math a lot of work for you - not ...