mathematics

Article

The Amateur New York Subway Riding Committee

During spring break at MIT in 1966, Peter R. Samson saw this quote on the back of a New York City subway map: "A Flushing youth, who wanted his money's worth, rode all lines of the subway on a single token. With doubling back as needed, the trip totaled over 400 miles - more than the train journey from New York to Pittsburgh. It took him 25 hours and 36 minutes." This set in motion Samson's extensive efforts to duplicate the feat. Enlisting other students and some serious MIT hardware (including a... READ ON

Article

A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie

Food writer Meg Hourihan went on a quest for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, and ended up with 26 recipes after just 24 hours. Instead of baking all 26 recipes separately, Hourihan simply averaged them for her mean chocolate chip cookie recipe (average = arithmetic mean, get it?). More... READ ON

Article

It's a math, math, math, math world...

Not sure if you've caught this, but the math world is positively abuzz because a reclusive Russian math scholar named Grigori Perelman has turned down the so-called "Nobel Prize of Math." Known as the Fields Medal, the prize is valued at $15,000 (Canadian), and considered one of the discipline's most prestigious awards. And while the move is essentially the academic equivalent of Jonathan Franzen turning down the Oprah Book Club, it might not be the only award Perelman turns down... READ ON

Article

2,218 years later, another "Eureka!" moment

You probably know the Greek mathematician Archimedes as the guy who figured out how buoyancy worked, leapt from his bath yelling "Eureka!," and ran through the streets of Syracuse as naked as Will Ferrell in, oh, any of his movies. But don't judge him based on his exhibitionism; some mathematicians put his work on a level with Isaac Newton's. Though many of Archimedes' manuscripts were lost when the library at Alexandria went up in flames (twice), a few survive, including one that until now has been... READ ON

Article

Madame Mathematics

With all the beer and sports around here (just 10 more hours left to enter our contest!), it's getting a little testosterone-y. So I thought I'd draw your attention to this wonderful piece in the Guardian about Emilie du ChÃ¢telet, intellectual femme fatale of the 18th century: In her late 20s, after an affair with the individual who inspired the character Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (she was the only partner he had who ever willingly dumped him), she met the poet and writer Voltaire, then in... READ ON

Article

Happy Birthday to Me! ... and him... and her...

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who makes his living as an actuary. We were talking about birthdays and I asked him why it seems like every time I go out to dinner on my birthday, there's at least one other person there celebrating his or her birthday, too, effectively stealing my thunder. My actuary friend explained that if you got 23 people together in a room, there's a 50-50 chance of at least one coincidental birthday. Seeing as restaurants usually seat at least twice that... READ ON