I noticed that two recent dates had the property that the day-month combination was just a permutation of the year.
This struck me as a rare occurrence. And then I realized that we had an honest-to-goodness palindrome date coming up!
This is definitely a rare occurrence! In celebration, I recommend that you do something forwards and then backwards.
I suppose the question now is, “When is the next palindrome day?”
I recent bought a bunch of different belts, and I was surprised at how my different choices reminded me of different number systems.
The belt in the middle is the integer belt. The holes are far apart and evenly spaced out, kind of like the integers 1, 2, 3, 4, … .
The belt on top is the rational number belt. The criss-cross pattern means there are lots more holes to choose from, and they are closer together.
The belt on the bottom is the real number belt. You can cinch this closed in a whole continuum of places. You basically have every length available to you, from 0 to whatever.
Belts and number systems; socks and the axiom of choice! What other math lurks in the closet?
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It’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!
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!
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.
As someone with an affinity for numbers, I’m always conscious of how they appear around us. And I’m always trying to decode the numbers I see: what do they mean? Why are they here?
It didn’t take much to figure out these numbers below these No U-Turns signs along the highway. (It’s a bit blurry, but if you squint you can make out the 55.39 in yellow.)
After a couple of miles of confirmation, it was clear that the 55 corresponds to the highway’s mile marker. So the 55.39 tells emergency vehicles the exact location of the U-Turn, 55.39 miles up the highway.
But is the .39 really necessary? How much accuracy do we need in these measurements? I can see wanting to avoid the confusion of naming it 55 (is it between 54 and 55, or 55 and 56?), but couldn’t we just call it 55.5 and save ourselves the trouble of the .39?
If the Highway Department has extra money to spend, how about new speed limit signs? Rounded the nearest integer, please!
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While at a hotel, waiting for some out-of-town friends to get ready, I went prime number hunting on the 11th floor.
I’m not especially good at factoring, so I just captured numbers that looked prime. I wasn’t thinking too hard about it, so I didn’t notice the one obvious non-prime until later, but the others looked pretty prime to me.
I expected more than one, but at least I didn’t come up empty.
Where are some other good places to go prime hunting?