Appreciation

Octomatics — The New New Math

octomatics 1It’s hard to tell how serious these people are about creating a new number system, but the effort is worthy of a little appreciation:  introducing Octomatics!

www.infoverse.org/octomatics/

Octomatics offers a new numeral systems that enjoys  a visual addition method and  a smaller  multiplication table.   They’ve also defined a new clock, a new calendar, and they’ve prototyped a new calculator!

octomatics 2

Truth be told, I’ve always secretly desired a new clock and calendar system–one that wasn’t so archaic and contrived.  I’m not getting my hopes up, though; Octomatics looks less like a paradigm shift and more like Esperanto to me.

By patrick honner, ago

More Math and Vegetables

I picked the wrong pot while preparing potatoes, and found the pot a little full.

Potatoes

I had to slice up the potatoes into smaller chunks so that they could all fit in my pot.  Predictably, my poorly planned pot of potatoes prompted me to ponder the packing problem.

In a simple form, the packing problem asks “What’s the best way to pack oranges in a rectangular box?”  Should the oranges be in columns (sitting right on top of each other?), or should you try to fit oranges into the gaps created when you make an orange-square (more like a pyramid?).

The packing problem, despite its seemingly modest statement, leads to very complicated and deep ideas.  My potatoes led to a very delicious side dish. 

By patrick honner, ago

Look Around You — Maths

funjy's mathsThis is a thoughtful and hilarious satire of old-school, British public television-style educational videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj2NOTanzWI

I laughed repeatedly throughout.  Watch the video, and give it a minute or so to win to you over.  It’s worth it.

P.S.  Students–please do not bring razor blades, Garry Gum, or Anti-Garry Gum to class in your pencil case.

Thanks to Ivan R. for showing me this! 

By patrick honner, ago

What’s So Special About 733?

number spiralThis is a nice resource from Erich Friedman, a math professor at Stetson University:  it’s a list of distinctive characteristics of [most of] the numbers between 1 and 9999:

http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/numbers.html

Now, maybe knowing that 215 is equivalent to 555 in base 6 isn’t that useful, but there are a lot of great ideas woven throughout this list of integers.  If you can fill in any of the gaps (do you know anything distinctive about 6821?), I’m sure Dr. Friedman would love to hear from you.

By patrick honner, ago

I, RuBot

RuBotThis is a great video of RuBot, the Rubik’s cube solving robot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOhU3WP7zXw

This video was shot at the Maker Faire, a sort of do-it-yourself science fair recently held in NYC.

Apparently you can scramble up the cube any way you like, and set it on RuBot’s platform.  RuBot picks it up, inspects the sides to determine the configuration, and then solves the cube!  RuBot must have been happy when it was recently announced that every position of the Rubik’s cube can be solved in 20 moves or less.

I’m not sure if Rubot can solve 4×4’s or 5×5’s cubes.  And I’m not sure why they made him look so creepy.

By patrick honner, ago
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