Interactive Mathematics Miscellany and Puzzles
Raymond Smullyan, a Mathematician, Philosopher and author of several outstanding books of logical puzzles, tells, in one of his books, a revealing story. A friend invited him for dinner. He told Smullyan that his teenage son was crazy about Smullyan's books and could not wait to meet him. The friend warned Smullyan not to mention that he is a Mathematician and that Logic is a part of Mathematics because the young fellow hated Mathematics.
Having told this story, would it be wise to announce up front what this site is about? Perhaps against a better judgement, I've put together a manifesto that aims to explain the purpose of this site.
By the way, did you know that...
- In a group of 23 people, at least two have the same birthday with the probability greater than 1/2
- Irrational number to an irrational power may be rational
- You are wrong if you think Mathematics is not fun
- There are curves that fill a plane without holes
- You can add apples and oranges
- cos(36) = (1 + sqrt(5))/4
- You can't add apples and oranges but you can add their shapes
- Demographic tests show that the person least likely to buy Wired magazine is an American schoolteacher
- There are just five regular polyhedra
- Much as with people, there are irrational, perfect, complex numbers
- Altitudes have ears, foot, stem, and root
- You can add apples and oranges
- A continuous linear function must have the form f(x)=ax. Discontinuous linear functions look dreadful
- In some circumstances, an index may have a content of its own
- The word 'fraction' derives from the Latin fractio - to break. However, there are continuous fractions
- One is morally obligated to do everything impossible
- Every infinite set contains uncountably many nested subsets
- You can position 10 defenders of a square castle so that on every side there will be 5 men
- Two simple polygons of equal area can be dissected into a finite number of congruent polygons
- There is order in chaos
|
Last updated: July 6, 2018 What has changed? |
|Contact| |Front page| |Index|
Copyright © 1996-2017 Alexander Bogomolny