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Rope-burning Puzzle
In recreational mathematics, rope-burning puzzles are a class of mathematical puzzle in which one is given lengths of rope, fuse cord, or shoelace that each burn for a given amount of time, and matches to set them on fire, and must use them to measure a non-unit amount of time. The fusible numbers are defined as the amounts of time that can be measured in this way. As well as being of recreational interest, these puzzles are sometimes posed at job interviews as a test of candidates' problem-solving ability, and have been suggested as an activity for middle school mathematics students. Example A common and simple version of this problem asks to measure a time of 45 seconds using only two fuses that each burn for a minute. The assumptions of the problem are usually specified in a way that prevents measuring out 3/4 of the length of one fuse and burning it end-to-end, for instance by stating that the fuses burn unevenly along their length. One solution to this problem is to perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rope Burning Puzzle
A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, string, and twine. Construction Rope may be constructed of any long, stringy, fibrous material, but generally is constructed of certain natural or synthetic fibres. Synthetic fibre ropes are significantly stronger than their natural fibre counterparts, they have a higher tensile strength, they are more resistant to rotting than ropes created from natural fibres, and they can be made to float on water. But synthetic ropes also possess certain disadvantages, including slipperiness, and some can be damaged more easily by UV light. Common natural fibres for rope are Manila hemp, hemp, linen, cotton, coir, jute, straw, and sisal. Synthetic fibres in use for rope-making include polypropylene, nylon, polyesters (e.g. PET, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knuth's Up-arrow Notation
In mathematics, Knuth's up-arrow notation is a method of notation for very large integers, introduced by Donald Knuth in 1976. In his 1947 paper, R. L. Goodstein introduced the specific sequence of operations that are now called ''hyperoperations''. Goodstein also suggested the Greek names tetration, pentation, etc., for the extended operations beyond exponentiation. The sequence starts with a unary operation (the successor function with ''n'' = 0), and continues with the binary operations of addition (''n'' = 1), multiplication (''n'' = 2), exponentiation (''n'' = 3), tetration (''n'' = 4), pentation (''n'' = 5), etc. Various notations have been used to represent hyperoperations. One such notation is H_n(a,b). Knuth's up-arrow notation \uparrow is an alternative notation. It is obtained by replacing /math> in the square bracket notation by n-2 arrows. For example: * the single arrow \uparrow represents exponentiation (iterated multiplication) 2 \uparrow 4 = H_3(2,4) = 2\times ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematical Problems
A mathematical problem is a problem that can be represented, analyzed, and possibly solved, with the methods of mathematics. This can be a real-world problem, such as computing the orbits of the planets in the solar system, or a problem of a more abstract nature, such as Hilbert's problems. It can also be a problem referring to the nature of mathematics itself, such as Russell's Paradox. Real-world problems Informal "real-world" mathematical problems are questions related to a concrete setting, such as "Adam has five apples and gives John three. How many has he left?". Such questions are usually more difficult to solve than regular mathematical exercises like "5 − 3", even if one knows the mathematics required to solve the problem. Known as word problems, they are used in mathematics education to teach students to connect real-world situations to the abstract language of mathematics. In general, to use mathematics for solving a real-world problem, the first ste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bulletin Of The London Mathematical Society
The London Mathematical Society (LMS) is one of the United Kingdom's learned societies for mathematics (the others being the Royal Statistical Society (RSS), the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA), the Edinburgh Mathematical Society and the Operational Research Society (ORS). History The Society was established on 16 January 1865, the first president being Augustus De Morgan. The earliest meetings were held in University College, but the Society soon moved into Burlington House, Piccadilly. The initial activities of the Society included talks and publication of a journal. The LMS was used as a model for the establishment of the American Mathematical Society in 1888. Mary Cartwright was the first woman to be President of the LMS (in 1961–62). The Society was granted a royal charter in 1965, a century after its foundation. In 1998 the Society moved from rooms in Burlington House into De Morgan House (named after the society's first president), at 57â ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Pouring Puzzle
Water pouring puzzles (also called water jug problems, decanting problems, measuring puzzles, or Die Hard with a Vengeance puzzles) are a class of puzzle involving a finite collection of water jugs of known integer capacities (in terms of a liquid measure such as liters or gallons). Initially each jug contains a known integer volume of liquid, not necessarily equal to its capacity. Puzzles of this type ask how many steps of pouring water from one jug to another (until either one jug becomes empty or the other becomes full) are needed to reach a goal state, specified in terms of the volume of liquid that must be present in some jug or jugs. By Bézout's identity, such puzzles have solution if and only if the desired volume is a multiple of the greatest common divisor of all the integer volume capacities of jugs. Rules It is a common assumption, stated as part of these puzzles, that the jugs in the puzzle are irregularly shaped and unmarked, so that it is impossible to accurate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Morris (statistician)
Carl Neracher Morris is a professor in the Statistics Department of Harvard University and spent several years as a researcher for the RAND Corporation working on the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. Early life Carl Morris had received his BS in Aeronautical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1960 and then attended Indiana University until 1962. He obtained his Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University under advisor Charles Stein in 1966. Since 1990, Morris has been at Harvard Statistics Department and Harvard Medical School Department of Health Care Policy. He served as the chair of the Harvard Statistics Department from 1994 to 2000. Morris has also been a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, Stanford University, and the University of Texas at Austin where he served as Director of the Center for Statistical Sciences. Morris is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Institute of Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gathering 4 Gardner
Gathering 4 Gardner (G4G) is an educational foundation and non-profit corporation (Gathering 4 Gardner, Inc.) devoted to preserving the legacy and spirit of prolific writer Martin Gardner. G4G organizes conferences where people who have been inspired by or have a strong personal connection to Martin Gardner can meet and celebrate his influence.Peterson, Ivars (2006). A Gathering for Gardner' Science News, March 23, 2006 These events explore ideas and developments in recreational mathematics, magic, illusion, puzzles, philosophy, and rationality, and foster creative work in all of these areas by enthusiasts of all ages. G4G also facilitates a related series of events called Celebration of Mind (CoM). History Martin Gardner's prolific output as a columnist and writer—he authored over 100 books between 1951 and 2010—put him in contact with a large number of people on a wide range of subjects from magic, mathematics, puzzles, physics, philosophy, logic and rationality, to G. K. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Erdős
Paul Erdős ( hu, Erdős Pál ; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, graph theory, number theory, mathematical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory. Much of his work centered around discrete mathematics, cracking many previously unsolved problems in the field. He championed and contributed to Ramsey theory, which studies the conditions in which order necessarily appears. Overall, his work leaned towards solving previously open problems, rather than developing or exploring new areas of mathematics. Erdős published around 1,500 mathematical papers during his lifetime, a figure that remains unsurpassed. He firmly believed mathematics to be a social activity, living an itinerant lifestyle with the sole purpose of writing mathematical papers with other mathem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Big O Notation
Big ''O'' notation is a mathematical notation that describes the limiting behavior of a function when the argument tends towards a particular value or infinity. Big O is a member of a family of notations invented by Paul Bachmann, Edmund Landau, and others, collectively called Bachmann–Landau notation or asymptotic notation. The letter O was chosen by Bachmann to stand for ''Ordnung'', meaning the order of approximation. In computer science, big O notation is used to classify algorithms according to how their run time or space requirements grow as the input size grows. In analytic number theory, big O notation is often used to express a bound on the difference between an arithmetical function and a better understood approximation; a famous example of such a difference is the remainder term in the prime number theorem. Big O notation is also used in many other fields to provide similar estimates. Big O notation characterizes functions according to their growth rates: d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptian Fraction
An Egyptian fraction is a finite sum of distinct unit fractions, such as \frac+\frac+\frac. That is, each fraction in the expression has a numerator equal to 1 and a denominator that is a positive integer, and all the denominators differ from each other. The value of an expression of this type is a positive rational number \tfrac; for instance the Egyptian fraction above sums to \tfrac. Every positive rational number can be represented by an Egyptian fraction. Sums of this type, and similar sums also including \tfrac and \tfrac as summands, were used as a serious notation for rational numbers by the ancient Egyptians, and continued to be used by other civilizations into medieval times. In modern mathematical notation, Egyptian fractions have been superseded by vulgar fractions and decimal notation. However, Egyptian fractions continue to be an object of study in modern number theory and recreational mathematics, as well as in modern historical studies of ancient mathematics. Appl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rational Number
In mathematics, a rational number is a number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction of two integers, a numerator and a non-zero denominator . For example, is a rational number, as is every integer (e.g. ). The set of all rational numbers, also referred to as "the rationals", the field of rationals or the field of rational numbers is usually denoted by boldface , or blackboard bold \mathbb. A rational number is a real number. The real numbers that are rational are those whose decimal expansion either terminates after a finite number of digits (example: ), or eventually begins to repeat the same finite sequence of digits over and over (example: ). This statement is true not only in base 10, but also in every other integer base, such as the binary and hexadecimal ones (see ). A real number that is not rational is called irrational. Irrational numbers include , , , and . Since the set of rational numbers is countable, and the set of real numbers is uncountable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unit Fraction
A unit fraction is a rational number written as a fraction where the numerator is one and the denominator is a positive integer. A unit fraction is therefore the reciprocal of a positive integer, 1/''n''. Examples are 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, etc. Arithmetic Elementary arithmetic Multiplying any two unit fractions results in a product that is another unit fraction: \frac1x \times \frac1y = \frac1. However, adding, subtracting, or dividing two unit fractions produces a result that is generally not a unit fraction: \frac1x + \frac1y = \frac \frac1x - \frac1y = \frac \frac1x \div \frac1y = \frac. Modular arithmetic In modular arithmetic, unit fractions can often be converted into equivalent integers using a calculation based on greatest common divisors. In turn, this conversion can be used to simplify division operations in modular arithmetic, by transforming them into equivalent multiplication operations. Specifically, consider the problem of dividing by a value x modulo y. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
