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Math is Hard, But Awesome
I have always liked math. Even when it was way over my head, I liked it. The one area of math that intrigued me the most was probability. Probably because it was useful in everyday activities, and the brain has a hard time understanding probabilities. I have forgotten more math then I know now. I pretty much forgot how to calculate the probability of things. What got me thinking about this is the current audiobook I am listening to, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Yeah, I am listening to a book about math.
It’s really good. I just finished a chapter about probability. Did you know your chances at winning the lottery are about the same as getting killed driving to buy a ticket? I never heard of Pascal’s Triangle before, but now I am ready more about it. Today I just started a chapter about randomness, and how it’s pretty much impossible to have a truly random number. Math may be hard, but it’s awesome too.
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Happy Square Root Day
Today is Square Root Day. Square Root Day is a rare day that occurs when the day and month are both the square root of the last two digits of the year as in, √9=3, or 3²=9, or 3×3=9. Square Root Days only happen nine times a century. The last one was February 2, 2004, and the next is April 4, 2016.
I hear you are suppose to celebrate by eating root vegetables cut into squares.
There is another geeky math holiday coming next Saturday. March 14th is a math holiday that happens every year. It’s Pi day, 3-14 or 3.14.
Then for even more math geekiness I ran across this awesomely funny t-shirt. I want it.
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Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader
At work the other day someone got an email with a simple math problem. Nobody could solve it, nobody, but me that is. I thought it was pretty simple. I am no math genius, but it was my favorite subject after science in school. Am I weird that I find math fun? I actually wish I could do more math for fun. I know I forgot most of the math that I learned in school, which sucks. So, here is that problem that nobody could figure out:
There are 7 girls on a school bus. Each girl has 7 backpacks. In each backpack there are 7 big cats. Each big cat has 7 little cats.
How many legs are on the bus?
There is no trickery. It’s just a simple math problem. Is it really hard, or do I work with a bunch of dummies? Try it out and put your answers in the comments.