This is the arithmetic portion of the MIT Entrance exam from 1869:
http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/arithmetic.html
Since it’s hosted by the MIT libraries website, I assume it’s authentic. I wonder if examinees were allowed to use graphing calculators on this exam?
Be sure to check out the English section also. I hope you know who Count Bismark is!
The next time you are in Germany, make sure to get yourself down to Bonn to check out the Calculator Museum. Or, you can just visit their website.
http://www.arithmeum.uni-bonn.de/en/home/
The museum is closed on Montags.
I’m not exactly sure what a Theutometer is, but it seems to be available in their giftshop, and I would gladly accept it as a holiday gift.
This is an engaging, if verbose, article in the NYT about logical paradoxes.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/paradoxical-truth/
There’s not much new ground covered here, but the author touches on some of the classics–the Liar’s Paradox (Is the statement “This sentence is false” true or false?), Zeno’s Paradox (you’ll never get from point A to point B because first you have to get halfway to B, say C, then halfway between C and B, say D, and so on).
The author notes that writers and philosophers love paradoxes. Students love paradoxes, too. It’s always enjoyable making a student act out Zeno’s paradox by making them get infinitely close to the board, or arguing about whether there are more even numbers or integers. And of course, everyone loves arguing about whether .999999999…. really equals 1 .
Another nice feature of this article is that the Comments section itself demonstrates a paradox: hundreds of people with nothing to say, saying plenty. It reminds me a lot of being in Philosophy class.
While in the park recently, I used the continuous setting on my camera to snap the following two pictures. The camera claims that the two frames are 1.1 seconds apart.
So today’s question: running at this rate, approximately how long would it take for this person to run a mile?
Related Posts
Some recent research sheds light on the interesting mathematics of how whale sharks move through the ocean.
Covering vast empty spaces between resources forces the shark to be natural optimizers when it comes to energy usage. For example, due to its natural negative buoyancy, the shark tends to sink in the ocean, meaning that ascending through the water requires greater energy expenditure.
In order most efficiently move through the water, the shark naturally gravitates to two general kinds of ascents. According to the article, the two techniques are a low-angle ascent that tends to minimize energy expenditure per unit of ascent, and a steep ascent that tends to maximizes the vertical change per unit energy.
It’s no surprise that nature is full of optimizers. Making the most of your resources goes a long way to survival!
You can read the full article here.