This Mondrian math puzzle yields puzzling scores



Vi Hart's statistical perspective on the American electoral divide


Fast-talking national-treasure math vlogger Vi Hart (previously) takes a statistical look at the polling data from the 2016 presidential election and concludes that the most significant divide in the country is "old vs young," which drives things like rural/urban (because young people leave failing rural areas for cities) and even racial divides. Read the rest

Donald Duck is a quite effective and surreal math teacher


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The best place to sit in a "suicide circle" if you really don't want to die


Math problems are more interesting when they are posed as horror stories.

The Josephus Problem gets its name from Titus Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish scholar.

The story goes that he was with 40 other soldiers when they were surrounded by conquering Romans - imagine that scene in Games of Thrones, where Ramsay Bolton's men trap Jon Snow's army in a tight circle and start moving in. Rather than give themselves up, the soldiers decided to commit suicide en mass, but by killing each other rather than themselves, to avoid any last-minute changes of heart. Sitting in a circle, the first soldier would kill the man to the left of him, the next living soldier would kill the man to his left, and so on around the circle. When the circle of slaughter got back to the start, the process would repeat with the smaller group of people. Finally, the last man alive would fall on his sword. Josephus' problem was that he was much keener on living than dying - but he didn't want to let his fellow soldiers in on that secret. So, where should he position himself in the circle to be the last man standing?

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The math behind solving the Rubik's Cube


In this Scientific American video, Rubik's Cube master Ian Scheffler, author of the new book Cracking the Cube, explains some of the math behind "speedcubing." Scheduler's book sounds fascinating even though the only way I could get my Rubik's Cube solved is to hand it to my 10-year-old son's friend Luc who was the first to dazzle me with the fine art of speedcubery.

From the description of Cracking the Cube:




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How a child math prodigy sees numbers as shapes



Mind-blowing explainer on fixed points


Understanding advanced mathematics can change how you see the world, so prepare for an eye-opening journey into the world of fixed points, courtesy of Michael at Vsauce. Read the rest


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The Scottish sketch comedy series Limmy’s Show! explores that classic riddle in the best way possible. As someone wrote on Tumblr, “This is me during every moment of math class.” Read the rest

Why swirling spheres shift rotation at a certain number



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Fix your floppy pizza slice with Gaussian curvature




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Remember Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years?

Meet Danica McKellar who as an undergraduate in college co-published a paper titled "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z2," research that resulted in the Chayes–McKellar–Winn theorem. Oh yeah, before that, McKellar was Winnie on The Wonder Years.

(And just to confirm, Josh Saviano who played Paul Pfeiffer did not grow up to become Marilyn Manson.)

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Photo of the raddest high school math teacher in 1970s SoCal


Math teacher at Dana Hills High School in southern California, late 1970s. Pitted. So pitted.

Posted by the engaged educator's son on r/OldSchoolCool and making the rounds again. Read the rest

Outliers: the statistical mysteries that hold the key to understanding

Everydata - High Res
John Johnson and Mike Gluck's new book, Everydata: The Misinformation Hidden in the Little Data You Consume Every Day is a tour-de-force of statistical literacy. This excerpt, a chapter on understanding statistical outliers, is as clear an explanation of what an outlier is, and what it means, and why it matters, as you're likely to find.

Echo Observatory: beautiful, tactile fractal explorer with knobs on


Love Hulten writes, "The Echo Observatory is a handcrafted tribute to fractals and self-similar patterns. It's a mysterious artifact that both generates and visualizes complex mathematical formations, in real-time." Read the rest

Where does your birthday land on pi?


To celebrate Pi Day (3/14), have fun with MyPiDay, developed last year by Stephen Wolfram and company. Enter your birthday or any other number and see where it first appears in pi.

Background in Wolfram's post here. Read the rest

Vi Hart Pi Day rant 2016: best one yet


Fast-talking, doodling math genius Vi Hart (previously) really hates Pi Day, and every year, she celebrates her loathing with a fresh video pooping on your 3/14 parade. Read the rest

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