On March 25 the New York Times Magazine had an article about Freeman Dyson, “The Civil Heretic.” It contains an interesting mathematical problem. At Jason, taking problems to Dyson is something of a parlor trick. A group of scientists will be sitting around the cafeteria, and one will idly wonder if there is an integer…
Tag: New York Times
Möbius bubble wrap
This week’s New York Times Magazine has an article called “The Year in Ideas.” One feature in the article is “Bubble Wrap That Never Ends,” by Vanessa Gregory. She writes about the popular Japanese keychain called Mugen Puchi Puchi. It has six small buttons on it, and pressing them simulates popping bubble wrap. The keychain…
KenKen
I just discovered a cool new Sudoku-like game called KenKen. A KenKen board is an nxn grid, and the object is to place the numbers 1 to n in each square subject to the following rules. Do not repeat a number in any row or column. The numbers in each heavily outlined set of squares,…
The US does not produce enough mathematical stars
The New York Times has an article today, “Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds“, which announces an upcoming article in the Notices of the AMS by Janet Mertz, Jonathan Kane, Joseph Gallian, and Titu Andreescu. The Times writes: The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially…
Math quotes on Freakonomics blog
There’s a mathematical topic today on the New York Times’ Freakonomics blog. Their daily bleg (definition: using a blog to beg for information): What’s been said about math? Readers are invited to leave their favorite quotes about mathematics (or quotes by mathematicians) in the comments.
David Richeson: Division by Zero 