MATH

Let's Roll a Yahtzee

The odds are 1 in 1,296. We can do this!

12 Scientific Postulates Perfectly Paired With Rap Lyrics

We’ve seen how the “Generate Line” feature at rap lyric writing tool RapPad can bring about unexpected poetry when paired with famous first lines from literature, but these serendipitous paths through form and meaning can be found in hard sciences as well

Meet the Sole Employee of the U.S. Metric Program

Almost 40 years after the 1975 Metric Conversion Act, the head of the U.S. Metric Program explains why change is hard.

36 Unusual Units of Measurement

We have a lot of words that mean a bunch of stuff or a bit of something, but many of those terms have actual, specific meanings. Let's learn about a whole barrel full of them.

6 Terrific Tattoos On Teachers

While we’ve seen librarians and scientists with tattoos, there is still a bit of a stigma against teachers coming into school with full sleeves of ink.

Edsger Dijkstra, Computer Scientist

In our Retrobituaries series, we highlight interesting people who are no longer with us. Today let's explore the life of Edsger Dijkstra, who died at 72 in 2002.

Google Celebrates UK's WWII Codebreakers

Pi Before Pi

Although our ancestors had managed to invent the wheel millennia prior to the good ol’ days of Ancient Egypt, it wasn't until that civilization arose thousands of years later that the human race began to understand the mysteries behind the circle. Our mod

10 Pies for Pi Day

Here are some wonderful Pi Day pies you might try this year.

William Jones: The First Math Teacher to Use Pi

Eighteenth-century mathematician William Jones had a problem with pi—namely, it didn’t exist yet. At the time of his working and teaching in the field of mathematics, there was no term for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, despite the

11 Great Geeky Math Tattoos

12 Mind Blowing Number Systems From Other Languages

Today is a big day for lovers of the number 12, and no one loves 12s more than the members of the Dozenal Society. The Dozenal Society advocates for ditching the base-10 system we use for counting in favor of a base-12 system. Because 12 is cleanly divisi

Kryptos: The CIA Cipher Hiding in Plain Sight

Kryptos, a set of huge copper plates with enciphered text carved into them, is an encrypted sculpture installed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Although the sculpture was installed in 1990, it took until 1999 for someone to actually decrypt part

Paul Erd?s, the Amphetamine-Popping Genius

Paul Erd?s was a mathematician. In addition to authoring significant papers himself, he created a series of Erd?s problems in which he offered (often small) cash prizes for solutions to difficult and/or significant mathematical challenges. He also had a

Math Food for Pi Approximation Day

July 22 is Pi Approximation Day because pi's fractional approximation is 22/7. To celebrate, here are some math foods Miss C rounded up last year. Food is often used to illustrate shapes, and recipes are used to introduce children to measurement and prop

This Tetris Documentary Will Rock You

So I'll go ahead and assume you're aware of King of Kong, the videogame documentary that chronicles an epic struggle to dominate the game of Donkey Kong. Kong was a surprising movie mainly because it was supremely interesting to non-nerds, even though it

How Random are Scratch-Off Lotto Tickets?

I'm not a lottery player -- I don't like throwing my money down a statistical hole in the ground -- but I'll admit that on occasion I have been the recipient of a scratch-off lottery ticket, and I have scratched it, and haven't won anything. What a bumme

6 Unit-Conversion Disasters

Forgetting to convert units of measurement can result in big-time disasters—like these six examples.

The Hardest Word to Guess in Hangman

Next time you want to trip someone up in hangman, try using the word "jazz." Mathematician Jon McLoone used a computer simulation that helped him uncover that "jazz" is the hardest word to guess in the game. The reason for this is simple: shorter words g

The Mathematical Pi Song

Two weeks ago I wrote about The Story of Pi, a semi-educational retro video that visually explains Pi. One commenter (lynn) pointed out a song I hadn't heard before, The Pi Song by Antoni Chan and Ken Ferrier. I present it below for your weekend edutain

Hammer and Feather Drop on the Moon

In 1971, astronaut David Scott conducted Galileo's famous hammer/feather drop experiment on the moon, during the Apollo 15 mission. Galileo had concluded that all objects, regardless of mass, fall at the same speed -- however, the resistance caused by th

3 Solved Math Mysteries (and 2 That Still Plague Us)

Mathematics has fascinated the human race nearly as long as our existence. Some of the coincidences between numbers and their applications are incredibly neat, and some of the most deceptively simple ones continue to stump us and even our modern computer

Rules for Time Travelers

Discover Magazine's Cosmic Variance blog brings us Rules for Time Travelers, a set of eleven rules that help to explain (or contradict) various time-travel scenarios in pop culture. And believe me, time travel is the new romantic comedy -- with Star Trek

Games and Their Overvalued Points

Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal brings us a smart article on overvalued points in games. In short, the issue is that rule changes in games like Scrabble (allowing new words like "qi" and "za") allow players a new way to exploit the system, throwin

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