Making Math fun and accessible
Here are some interesting recent Math-related posts in the “blathosphere.”
Carnival of Mathematics 29 is out at Quomodocumque. The Number Warrior will be hosting the next Carnival on April 4.
You have only a couple more days to get your solutions in for the second Monday Math Madness at Blinkdagger.
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Blinkdagger has posted the second Monday Math Madness contest. It has a fun St. Patrick’s Day theme. Check it out!
You’ve got a week to solve this problem and send in your well-explained solution. The Blinkdagger guys are giving out $10 in Amazon gift certificate cash to a randomly-selected winner.
April 7th will be the next contest at Wild About Math! I’ll be giving away something more fun that cash next time so check back here but solve the Blinkdagger St. Patty’s Day problem first.
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We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog for a non-Math post …
It’s Saturday night here, I was just memed by Robert at Reason-4-Smile, I don’t feel like doing any productive work so I’ll answer the meme and launch it further into the blogosphere.
The meme asks me to give a link to the person who meme’d me, to tell 7 interesting things about me, and to then pass the meme on. I interpreted the meme to mean that I should tell things that you’re not likely to guess. Here goes:
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Today is March 14th, or 3/14 as Americans write dates. Think that pi is roughly 3.14 and you’ll see why today is Pi Day.
Denise at Let’s Play Math does a superb job of writing about this special day. She’s got a Pi poem, lots of links to pi-related pages and even a hokey but very funny mathematical pi song.
Math Mom is also commemorating this special day with some ideas about how to celebrate the day. Plus, there are other ideas in the comments of Math Mom’s post.
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I wanted to state what some of you may have been noticing: My rate of posting has decreased, posts have been more superficial, and I’ve been slow to respond to comments. Life has been busier than I expected, with important life matters and paid short-term project work filling a significant percent of my time. The slowness may last several weeks. I’m not dropping this blog as I enjoy the value that I give and receive through this community. I may not get to do a significant post until early next week. Stay tuned for the Blinkdagger contest post Monday, and for my next contest the first Monday of April. Also, do subscribe to my mailing list to get Math Bite emails with interesting little Math tidbits.
In upcoming posts I’ll share a very nice alternative approach to the Monday Math Madness contest I received and I’ll review an outstanding Geometry book for those of you who want a real work out when doing Geometry.
I’m also going to experiment with doing some short posts that tell you about what other Math bloggers are writing about to keep the momentum moving. And, if any of you would like to write some guest posts to bring some attention to your blogs I’m very open to that possibility.
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For the very first Monday Math Madness contest we got 13 submissions. Of the 13, 6 were correct. For the record, I solved the problem by enumerating the various cases where 3 categories were represented and computing and adding their probabilities. I also verified my solution to the problem by writing a computer program to enumerate all 243 (3^5) permutations of 3 categories and 5 blog posts and count the ones were all 3 blog categories were represented. So, I’m pretty confident I got the right answer 
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Brian Foley runs a web-site, Math Mojo and a blog, The Math Mojo Chronicles. The web-site aims to make, in Brian’s words, “Math meaningful.” While I enjoy the site, I struggled to explain what Math Mojo was about until I found this description in the What is Math Mojo page:
Math Mojo is a way of looking at math that fosters a sense for numbers. The more new ways you learn and practice, the more of a feel you will get for manipulating and understanding how numbers work. They will become less of a mystery, and you will feel better about your ability to do math. These methods are based on several different speed-math techniques. They all work at least as well as the methods that you were taught in school. In fact, schools that teach these methods do much better than the national average.
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I’m in the mood for some “light” writing so I thought I’d report this …
The Bad Astronomy blog posted an article last November about reviewers of Texas Math books finding 109,623 errors among the books they reviewed. Houghton Mifflin, publisher of the books containing the majority of the errors - 86,026 of them, is tasked with correcting the mistakes by spring or paying a $5,000 fine for each one that remains when the books “go live” in classrooms this fall. An article in the Dallas Morning News gives more dirt.
One error noted was the inclusion of answers to problems in some books that should only have appeared in the teacher editions. There were also language translation errors and errors in computation.
How did Houghton Mifflin commit over 86,000 errors in textbooks? How was that possible?
This story reminds me of the joke about health books: “Don’t believe everything you read in books about health; you might die of a misprint.” I hope Houghton Mifflin isn’t writing software to fly airplanes any time soon.
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Do you know what is interesting about March 9 this year to most US residents?
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Four of you have submitted answers to Monday Math Madness so far but only two of them are correct. Remember, the Blinkdagger guys and I are picking a good random answer, not the first good answer. So, you’ve all still got a chance to win $10 to Amazon.
Heather, from the 360 blog, gave the problem to one of her classes to solve, and told them how to submit their answers. So, if you’ve got Math students who have learned some probability then have them try their hand at this problem. It’s not super difficult but it’s tricky enough that only half the solutions submitted were correct.
You all have until Sunday night to get your submissions in. And, if you don’t like this problem or miss the deadline, Blinkdagger will be running the next contest, starting in 12 days.
Happy problem solving!
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