An Archive of Curious Facts for the Curious
Image: Spikedmath “If you want to see practical applied mathematics, read chemical engineering; if you want to see theoretical applied mathematics, read electrical engineering, and if you want to read pure math, read economics.” — Richard I. Pelletier
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Higgledy-piggledy Euclid Geometer Pained by the asking of “What is the use Studying the doctrines so Axiomatical?” Answered acutely, “Oh, Don’t be obtuse!” — Anthony Harrington
Read MoreWhen I was a boy, my grandfather used to give me puzzles for me to solve. The following puzzle is one of them. A magic square is an arrangement of numbers from 1 to n² in an n² matrix in which each number should only occur once. Every row, column, and diagonal of a magic […]
Read MoreThe following is a simple activity for learning a simple number theory concept. This is based on the procedure described by Martin Gardner in Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments (1988). All you need for this is a pack of cards. First, remove all the cards of one suit (e.g. all the spades). Afterwards, arrange the […]
Read MoreConsider this group of squares: 1237892 + 5619452 + 6428642 – 2428682 – 7619432 – 3237872 = 0 When looking at the calculation above, it seems that it’s not a big deal. Although the six large squares yield zero after the calculation, it is not really that peculiar. But, try to remove the hundred thousands place or the left-most digit of […]
Read MoreSelect any whole number greater than zero then perform the following operation: If the number is even, divide it by 2. If the number is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1. It’s said that if you continue to repeatedly apply the process, you’d always end up at 1. This is the premise of […]
Read MoreCurious Number 323323 Besides being a palindromic number, 323323 has some other cool properties. For example, it is equal to 7 × 11 × 13 × 17 × 19, which are consecutive primes. It’s also equal to the sum of consecutive numbers from 1 to 9 wherein each of the number is raised by a […]
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Here’s a site with a strange name (arguably, in this context, not so) that shows the first one million digits of π. The site is: http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com The exact web address that contains the one million digits of π is:
Read MoreI went to a math conference, and they had booths set up for several different branches of mathematics so students could learn about them. Unfortunately, the topology booth was closed, the algebra booth was way out in a field, and although I could get arbitrarily close to the analysis booth, I couldn’t touch it. The […]
Read MoreThis is a list I made quite some time ago. Might as well publish it here. 1. Even Galileo didn’t know calculus, so why should I? 2. When I tried to reach my textbook, I could only reach half the distance, then when I tried to reach it again, I could only reach half of […]
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