Research has been published describing a mathematical model that successfully predicts the ratios of left-handers to right-handers in different sports.
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Shadow Box by Laura Kishimoto
The Odds Gods smile on birthday/card matches
The classic birthday problem asks how many people are required to ensure a greater than 50% chance of having at least one birthday match, meaning that two or more people share a birthday. The surprisingly small answer, assuming that all birthdays are equally likely and ignoring leap years like 2012, is 23 people.
What’s the (implicit) equation for “equation”?
See for yourself with this inverse graphing calculator.
APPROXYMOTION by Peter A Vikar
[vimeo url=http://vimeo.com/40641882]
Peter’s site is full of beautifully stark geometric/topological art
Classic maths books reset with LaTeX on Project Gutenberg
I was going to save this for an Aperiodical Round Up but it’s such a good thing I thought I’d post it straight away. Project Gutenberg has moved on from offering just plain-text transcriptions of books: volunteers have been outstandingly generous with their time and produced LaTeX versions of many maths books, producing versions that are considerably more readable and resemble the original editions much more closely.
Not all the books in that list have been converted to LaTeX yet. Of those that have, GH Hardy’s A Course of Pure Mathematics leaps out as a good place to start. Compare it with this book still in HTML format to see the difference.
(via reddit)
Inclusion and Exclusion and the new GMAT
Dublin native Colm Mulcahy has been in the Department of Mathematics at Spelman College since 1988. His interests include algebra, number theory, geometry and mathematical card principles and effects. Follow him on Twitter at @CardColm and also check out @WWMGT.
The last question, under the heading “Two-Part Analysis”, at the end of this NYT article (from July 2011) on the new GMAT seems to be deliberately worded in a way that forces one to read and think very carefully.
It takes a while to even process the question as it’s asked! I’m assuming that was intentional.
I’m curious how “they” intended people to solve this. Exclude impossible answers until only one is still Included? I guess so.