The joke is... that both vans are the same number - there is no difference in what news channel you watch as they're all the same (and irrational)!
Futurama math
Sep 2, 2010
The joke is... that both vans are the same number - there is no difference in what news channel you watch as they're all the same (and irrational)!
Golden Balls: Split or Steal
May 29, 2010
This is an interesting tv show. Golden Balls is a British daytime game show. At the end of the show the contestants have to make one last decision over the final jackpot. They are each presented with two golden balls. One has "split" printed inside it and the other has "steal" printed inside it:
Link 1
Link 2
There may not be a whole lot of math involved, but social scientists have studied the game. See the paper "Split or Steal? Cooperative Behavior When the Stakes are Large".
Click to read the comments on this entry...- If both contestants choose the split ball, the jackpot is split equally between them.
- If one contestant chooses the split ball and the other chooses the steal ball, the stealer gets all the money and the splitter leaves empty-handed.
- If both contestants choose the steal ball, they both leave empty-handed.
Link 1
Link 2
There may not be a whole lot of math involved, but social scientists have studied the game. See the paper "Split or Steal? Cooperative Behavior When the Stakes are Large".
Big Bang Theory xxx Parody
Apr 23, 2010
If you like The Big Bang Theory, you might like this youtube parody video:
"When four geniuses (Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, & Howard) realize that the only boobs they ever see are in their Slavegirl Space Princess wet dreams, they do the math and cum up with an equation for attracting horny young women! With a huge comic-book convention coming up, they only have a short amount of time to try out the formula on their beautiful blonde neighbor Penny, their hot co-workers, and slutty cosplay girls. Will they have enough time to find some good Mario costumes for the show?"
Old School - math question
Mar 28, 2010
I just watched that movie called Old School (yes it's from 2003). They had a nice math question during the movie. It was as follows:
You can see the clip over at Oliver Knill's site: mathematics in movies.
Click to read the comments on this entry...Which of the following is a generally accepted graphical technique for determining first order system parameters?
a) Harriot's method of solving cubics
b) Pythagorean triplets
c) The migration method of graphing quadratic functions?
You can see the clip over at Oliver Knill's site: mathematics in movies.
The Office - Math Fail
Jan 16, 2010
Balloon boy fail (do the math)
Oct 19, 2009
Ya so I keep hearing about this balloon boy... although I haven't actually read any news articles on it, so based on headlines I keep seeing this is what I suspect happened:
- Richard Heene makes experimental helium balloon
- Heene & wife freakout since their "son" may be in the basket
- crapload of publicity, balloon comes down, son not in there
- son was actually in the Heene house attic all along
- 4chan delivers pizza to balloon boy
- news now reporting the stunt was a hoax
- charges filed against Heene
So what does this have anything to do with math? Well I came across this post about someone doing the "math behind the balloon boy story". Basically they do some fancy calculations to see if it was ever possible for such a crappy balloon to lift a small boy:
You can find the rest of the post here.
Click to read the comments on this entry..."Was it ever even possible that a 20' x 5' helium balloon could lift the weight of a six-year-old to 8,000 feet MSL? Let's take a look at some numbers. Taking Falcon Heene's father at his reported word, the balloon that news helicopters followed for two hours Thursday (because they thought Falcon was aboard) was 20 feet by five feet. We don't know if that included the compartment at the bottom -- so let's be conservative and assume it did not."
You can find the rest of the post here.
Math Teachers at Play 17
Oct 18, 2009
The mathrecreation blog just posted Math Teachers at Play 17 (well on Oct 15th, so I'm a few days late). You can find lots of humour (umm... or humor as they said on their site)... movies, activities, and MATH!!
As quoted:
Click to read the comments on this entry..."There is plenty of humor, a few movies, some great activities and explorations, and lots of math in Math Teachers at Play 17. Hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did. Thanks to everyone who submitted posts or answered my requests to include their work."Go check it out NOW and enjoy all the links, there is a lot of them so it should keep you busy for quite some time.
Look around you maths
Oct 8, 2009
This British comedy show is hilarious. It's called "Look Around You" and the second epsidoe is about "Maths". Check it out on youtube (at least for now):
Quote from the show (but you really have to watch it to put it in perspective!!):
Click to read the comments on this entry..."Narrator: What's the largest number you can think of ?And one of the problems they presented:
Person 1: 100,000
Person 2: 999,000
Person 3: a million!
Narrator: In actual fact it's neither of these. The largest number is about 45 billion, although mathematicians suspect there may be even larger numbers!"
"Narrator: Eight ladies go to eight shops at eight o'clock in the morning. Each lady wants to buy eight spiders. For each spider, eight spider shoes must also be bought. But they only have eight pounds between them. With each spider costing eight pence and each spider shoe costing an eighth pence each, will the ladies have enough change for the bus ride home? A journey costing eight pence per stop and made up of eight stops."Check out the wiki entry for more information.
New Numb3rs season starts Friday!
Sep 23, 2009
The sixth season will premiere Friday September 25.
Numb3rs an American television drama, which premiered on January 23, 2005 on CBS. The series was created by Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton, and follows FBI Special Agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) and his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz), who helps Don solve crimes for the FBI. Numb3rs is produced by brothers Ridley and Tony Scott and it's production company is Scott Free Productions and CBS Television Studios.
Numb3rs an American television drama, which premiered on January 23, 2005 on CBS. The series was created by Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton, and follows FBI Special Agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) and his mathematical genius brother, Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz), who helps Don solve crimes for the FBI. Numb3rs is produced by brothers Ridley and Tony Scott and it's production company is Scott Free Productions and CBS Television Studios.
The show focuses equally on the relationships between Don Eppes, his
brother Charlie Eppes and their father, Alan Eppes (Judd Hirsch), and
on the brothers' efforts to fight crime, normally in Los Angeles. A
typical episode begins with a crime, which is subsequently investigated
by a team of FBI agents led by Don and mathematically described by
Charlie, with the help of Larry Fleinhardt (Peter MacNicol) and Amita
Ramanujan (Navi Rawat). The insights provided by Charlie's mathematics
are always in some way crucial to solving the crime.
See the wiki entry for more info.
Click to read the comments on this entry...See the wiki entry for more info.
New season of `The big bang theory'
Sep 21, 2009
Today starts season 3 of the hit tv show The Big Bang Theory! If you've never heard of this show then you should definitely check it out. It is chalk full of geek humor.
It is set in California, and is about two guy Caltech prodigies in their twenties, one an experimental physicist (Leonard) and the other a theoretical physicist (Sheldon), who live across the hall from an attractive blonde waitress with show-biz aspirations (Penny). Leonard and Sheldon's geekiness and intellect are contrasted with Penny's social skills. Two equally geeky friends of theirs, Howard and Rajesh, are also main characters.
Link: wiki entry
Click to read the comments on this entry...It is set in California, and is about two guy Caltech prodigies in their twenties, one an experimental physicist (Leonard) and the other a theoretical physicist (Sheldon), who live across the hall from an attractive blonde waitress with show-biz aspirations (Penny). Leonard and Sheldon's geekiness and intellect are contrasted with Penny's social skills. Two equally geeky friends of theirs, Howard and Rajesh, are also main characters.
Link: wiki entry
Patricia Heaton has troubles with easy math
Sep 11, 2009
Patricia Heaton (from the tv show "Everybody Loves Raymond"), has a hard
time on one incredibly easy question for $50,000 for charity on the
Millionaire 10th Anniversary Celebration. The question is:
If a euro is worth $1.50, five euros is worth what?
a) thirty quarters
b) fifty dimes
c) seventy nickels
d) ninety pennies
After five minutes of struggling, she FINALLY managed to get it right.
You can find the video on youtube with a simple search of her name.
Click to read the comments on this entry...If a euro is worth $1.50, five euros is worth what?
a) thirty quarters
b) fifty dimes
c) seventy nickels
d) ninety pennies
After five minutes of struggling, she FINALLY managed to get it right.
You can find the video on youtube with a simple search of her name.
How to Compute Cubed Roots Fast
Aug 9, 2009
Take a look at this video of Scott Flansburg on the Discovery Channel's "More Than Human":
In the video you see Scott Flansburg take the cubed root of 658,503 to get an answer of 87 in a matter of a second. How does he do it you ask?
This trick does require some memorization though, and also requires the
number given to be a perfect cube. You need to memorize the cubes of
the numbers 0 through 9 (or be able to figure them out on the spot).
This information is contained below:
Note that the last digits of the cubes on the right have all the numbers 1 to 9, but no number is repeated. Here is how to find the two-digit cube root of a perfect cube.
Take a number, such as 658,503 which is grouped into two parts.
1. Looking at the number we see it ends in a 3, and according to the table only 7^3 ends in a 3, thus the last digit of our number is 7.
2. Next, ignore the last 3 digits of the cube, so consider 658. Compare these digits with the table above. Note that 658 fits between 512 and 729. You always choose the smaller one, in this case 512 which happens to correspond to 8^3.
Thus, the last digit is 7 and the first digit is 8, giving an answer of 87.
Normally this trick is used for six digit perfect cubes. To help understand how this works, ask yourself - What is the last digit of (10x+y)^3? Clearly it is y^3 mod 10 (how does this relate to #1?).
Another Example:
In 474,552 we have that 343 is the immediate smallest number from 474 so the first digit is 7.
The last digit in 474,552 is 2 and only 8^3 ends in a 2, so the last digit is 8. Hence, 78^3=474,552.
Click to read the comments on this entry...Note that the last digits of the cubes on the right have all the numbers 1 to 9, but no number is repeated. Here is how to find the two-digit cube root of a perfect cube.
Take a number, such as 658,503 which is grouped into two parts.
1. Looking at the number we see it ends in a 3, and according to the table only 7^3 ends in a 3, thus the last digit of our number is 7.
2. Next, ignore the last 3 digits of the cube, so consider 658. Compare these digits with the table above. Note that 658 fits between 512 and 729. You always choose the smaller one, in this case 512 which happens to correspond to 8^3.
Thus, the last digit is 7 and the first digit is 8, giving an answer of 87.
Normally this trick is used for six digit perfect cubes. To help understand how this works, ask yourself - What is the last digit of (10x+y)^3? Clearly it is y^3 mod 10 (how does this relate to #1?).
Another Example:
In 474,552 we have that 343 is the immediate smallest number from 474 so the first digit is 7.
The last digit in 474,552 is 2 and only 8^3 ends in a 2, so the last digit is 8. Hence, 78^3=474,552.
Why is life expectancy higher in Canada?
Aug 4, 2009
Taking a look at the table in wikipedia the life expectancy for Canada is indeed a bit higher than that of the USA. Peter Gillies asked this question and Bill O'Reilly answers it perfectly:
"Well, that's to be expected, Peter, because we have ten times as many people as you do. That translates to ten times as many accidents, crimes, down the line..."
Video:
Click to read the comments on this entry..."Well, that's to be expected, Peter, because we have ten times as many people as you do. That translates to ten times as many accidents, crimes, down the line..."
Video:
The Human Calculator - Scott Flansburg
Aug 1, 2009- Scott Flansburg was born in New York on December 28, 1963.
- He served in the U.S. Air Force (1982-1988) and had a tour of duty with the Office of Special Investigations in Tokyo, Japan. He then returned to the United States and became an advocate of teaching math in an innovative fashion.
- In 1989 he drew the attention of Regis Philbin. Mr. Philbin is the individual that is credited for naming Scott, The Human Calculator during his appearance on The Regis and Kathy Lee Show.
- In 1991 he began working on a project called Turn On the Human Calculator In You, a series of tapes that was subsequently on Mike Levy's Amazing Discoveries.
- Turn On the Human Calculator In You was one of the most successful early infomercials touted as having in excess of 125 million viewings.
- The follow-up product was called Mega Math with Kevin Tredeau (1996) which added a video and workbook and was later published by Tru Vantage International.
- He has subsequently appeared on countless television shows including Oprah, Ellen, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Good Morning America, Discovery Channel's `More Than Human', and thousands of local radio and TV shows.
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