Fractals are infinitely complex – infinite and complex are two carefully chosen descriptors. The Menger sponge is one of the classic construction fractals. Start with a cube. On each face draw a Tic-Tac-Toe grid of nine squares, then drill a rectangular tunnel straight through the middle square. Here’s a challenge: you can think of the…
So, there’s this traveling salesman who wants to …. Wait! This is not the prelude to a bad joke, this is a mathematical problem of current importance. The traveling salesman is headquartered in city 0, and needs to visit cities 1, 2, 3, …, n on a business trip and then return to city 0.…
April is Math Awareness Month, and this year’s theme of “Mathematics, Magic, and Mystery” has been wonderfully illustrated by videos and activities at mathaware.org. Some of these topics were previewed in the March “Pun and Taylor” magic show. On April 16, two more magical topics were covered by Dr. Karin Saoub and Dr. Hannah Robbins.…
Part math and part magic, the March 13 MCSP Conversation Series talk “Penn and Teller Pun and Taylor Present Mathematical Magic and Mystery” entertained a large audience in Massengill Auditorium. This was the very off-Vegas presentation of Mathematics professors Roland “Pun” Minton and Dave “Taylor” Taylor. Some of their tricks are mathematically-based magic tricks. For…
The Sloan Sports Analytic Conference (SSAC) is sports stats heaven. At the 2014 conference in Boston on February 28 – March 1, “The Man” showed up in many guises (Bill James, Nate Silver, Malcolm Gladwell, Phil Jackson) and we heard from Boston’s sports nobility (owners of the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots; Celtics coach Brad…
What would you expect from a show titled Calculus: The Musical ? For the 150 in attendance on February 26, 2014, at Roanoke College the correct answer was “fun!” An irresistible charm emerges from the show’s quirky blend of mathematical puns, fractured history, and just enough calculus to keep it real. But the heart of…
Fans of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy know that 42 is “The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” although, as it turns out, we don’t actually know what that question is. Mathematicians may have found part of the question. Think about packing tennis balls (don’t panic – there’s a…
One of the reasons to keep exploring new ideas in mathematics is the frequency with which stars align and one of these ideas turns out to be central to the operation of the universe. That overstates the case, of course, but we all know that deep feeling when something that you just discovered starts appearing…
