• In the Details

    Updated: 2013-01-30 21:12:26
    When the MIT Mystery Hunt was about to end, I asked my son Sergei, who was competing with the team “Death from Above,” what his favorite puzzle was. I asked the same question to a random guy from team “Palindrome” whom I ran into in the corridor. Surprisingly, out of 150 [...]

  • Changes to frequency of MATH 312 (Real Analysis) being offered

    Updated: 2013-01-30 19:01:23
    Starting in the fall of 2013, MATH 312 (Concepts of Real Analysis) will only be offered in the fall semester. In the recent past, it has been offered in the both the fall and spring.If this raises any concerns, please see your advisor. 312 is a requirement for graduation, and we highly recommend taking it in your junior/3rd year.If you have any questions, please see Dr. Michael Rutter or Dr. Michelle Previte.

  • Of frolics and tangos

    Updated: 2013-01-30 16:08:44
    Shecky over at Math Frolic has been getting antsy. One blog isn't enough for him. Now there's Math Tango! From the welcome post: WELCOME Math-Frolickers!… MathTango is intended (and it'll be a bit of an experiment) to be the new residence for longer, more original entries that were occasionally posted at Math-Frolic (including book reviews, [...]

  • The Economic Order Quantity – a simple calculus application

    Updated: 2013-01-29 00:17:29
    The EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) formula is a deceptively simple model. It comes from Zipkin’s “Foundations of Inventory Management” (Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2000, 0-256-11379-3) and it is the very first model in the book. It was first published 100 years ago, in 1913 – the model, not the book!. When all is said and done, it’s a [...]

  • Have you heard of Math Munch?

    Updated: 2013-01-28 05:07:01
    I just discovered the Math Munch blog. It promotes itself as "A Weekly Digest of the Mathematical Internet." Their blog further explains: Here you will find links to lots of cool mathy things on the internet. We'll post some new items each week for you to enjoy. We hope you are as inspired and excited [...]

  • Glen Van Brummelen – Inspired by Math #18

    Updated: 2013-01-28 04:11:10
    Today I got to interview another great author of a Princeton University Press title. "Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry" is a delightful exploration of the techniques that ancient and medieval people from different cultures used to navigate and map the stars and the seas along with modern methods. There's a strong focus [...]

  • Happenings – 2013 Jan 26

    Updated: 2013-01-26 17:35:45
    Since putting out the latest technical post, I haven’t done a whole lot. I’m falling a little behind in my two Coursera classes (Intro Computational Finance, and Image Processing)… I have not been playing with Matlab, not much anyway… I have an idea for the next control theory post, but I don’t know about getting [...]

  • Portals

    Updated: 2013-01-26 16:15:27
    The second “instructioned” puzzle is Portals by Palmer Mebane. It is an insanely beautiful and difficult logic puzzle that consists of known puzzle types interconnected to each other through portals. Here Palmer Mebane explains how portals work: “Each of the ten puzzles corresponds to a color, seen above the grid [...]

  • Random Walk

    Updated: 2013-01-26 16:02:40
    There were a couple of puzzles during the MIT Mystery Hunt that were not so mysterious. Unlike in traditional hunt puzzles, these puzzles were accompanied by instructions. As a result you can dive in and just enjoy solving the logic part of the puzzle without bothering about the final phase, [...]

  • Open Secrets

    Updated: 2013-01-25 22:10:12
    Today I have a special treat for you. Here is the first of several puzzles that I plan to present from the 150 that we used in the MIT Mystery Hunt 2013. Keep in mind that although the puzzles have authors, they were the result of a collaboration of all the [...]

  • Apologies

    Updated: 2013-01-25 20:29:13
    I dropped my blog for two months. Some of my readers got worried and wrote to ask if I was okay. Thanks for your concern. I am okay. I was consumed by the MIT Mystery Hunt. My team, Manic Sages, won the hunt a year ago, and as a punishment — oops, I meant [...]

  • Children’s Riddle

    Updated: 2013-01-23 17:06:27
    The father of my son has four children. My son is my only child. How many children do we have in total together? a2a_linkname="Children’s Riddle"; a2a_linkurl="http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/?p=434";

  • Keith Devlin – Inspired by Math #17

    Updated: 2013-01-22 13:33:08
    Dr. Keith Devlin joins me for a second podcast interview. Keith Devlin and I first spoke last February. Last night Keith Devlin shared in great detail his experience teaching "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). If you're considering enrolling in the MOOC when it's next offered in March, or if you might [...]

  • Happenings – 2013 Jan 19

    Updated: 2013-01-19 16:54:43
    I’m slowly getting back into the saddle. As you can see, a technical post went out last Monday… the first in quite some time. Well, things slowed down around the holidays. We’ll see, however, if I manage to write up a tech post this weekend. I am also being distracted by taking two classes thru [...]

  • The nonsense maths effect

    Updated: 2013-01-16 08:10:42
    Stephen Hawking was once told by an editor that every equation in a book would halve the sales. Curiously, the opposite seems to happen when it comes to research papers. Include a bit of maths in the abstract (a kind of summary) and people rate your paper higher — even if the maths makes no sense at all. At least this is what a study published in the Journal Judgment and decision making seems to suggests.read more

  • Steven Strogatz – Inspired by Math #16

    Updated: 2013-01-15 03:45:58
    Shecky over at the Math Frolic Blog has been a great supporter of this podcast series and recently made this observation: I've been pleasantly surprised by the degree to which 'math people,' including such prominent and busy ones as [Ian] Stewart, Keith Devlin, Steven Strogatz and others, are willing to share themselves with the learning [...]

  • An elegant puzzle at the New York Times

    Updated: 2013-01-14 18:36:02
    Joshua Zucker shared this great Numberplay puzzle at the New York Times Wordplay Blog: Start with a first row with two number ones separated by a space: Row 1: 1 1 For each subsequent row, insert the sum between each two adjacent numbers, so you get: Row 2: 1 2 1 Row 3: 1 3 [...]

  • Mircea Pitici – Inspired by Math #15

    Updated: 2013-01-14 02:31:05
    Mircea Pitici has taken on a huge task, to present the best articles in Mathematics for the year. For three years running he's edited a book for Princeton University Press with his picks. Since identifying great communicators is a big interest of mine I'm delighted to get to pick his brain for an hour. [ [...]

  • Happenings – 2013 Jan 12

    Updated: 2013-01-12 17:30:41
    Well… I have just about finished my dead-tree annual letter, so I can start getting back into the blog. I put out 93 posts in 2012, 52 of which were my diary (“Happenings”) posts, so only 41 technical posts. The blog got about 81,000 hits during 2012, an average of about 222 hits per day [...]

  • Ian Stewart – Inspired by Math #14

    Updated: 2013-01-11 19:19:05
    I was very honored to have Dr. Ian Stewart give me an hour of his time this morning to interview him about his enthusiasm for communicating Math to the public. Dr. Stewart is the author of a couple of dozen very popular Math books. You can see a list at Amazon.com. Dr. Stewart and I [...]

  • A new approach to mental math

    Updated: 2013-01-10 02:52:18
    I received an email from Anton Prosolov, a programmer from Norway. His site, King of Mnemonics, sells software that Anton developed, and a novel he wrote. I have invented a brand new approach to mental math that focuses on something people are good at (which is memory) rather than something they're bad at (which is [...]

  • Happenings – 2013 Jan 5

    Updated: 2013-01-05 16:07:46
    I haven’t even finished Xmas yet – still more friends to visit and gifts to exchange. I’m not planning a technical post for this Monday. Heck, I’m not even going to try yet to summarize the past year on the blog – I’m still working on my annual dead-tree letter. I have, however, found an [...]

  • The Enigma of the Spiral Waves is now available

    Updated: 2013-01-04 02:07:44
    I'm excited to announce that Volume Two of Matthew Watkins' "Secrets of Creation" trilogy, "The Enigma of the Spiral Waves," is now available. From the author's web site: The Enigma of the Spiral Waves takes its readers further into into the workings of the number system. Continuing to make use of Watkins and Tweed's innovative [...]

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