World Stats Counter

worldometersThis website provides running tallies on several world-wide statistics:

http://www.worldometers.info/

Data on Population, Energy, Economics, and Health are all constantly “updating”, brought you you by the Real Time Statistics Project.

In addition to the obvious questions one could ask, like “At what point will the world’s population grow to over 10 billion?” or “When will the earth run out of oil?”, there are interesting meta-questions like “Where do these models come from?” and “What assumptions are being made to calculate the amount of money spent on weight-loss programs?”.

Another nice resource to play around with!

By patrick honner, ago

2011 AIME A #8: Triangular Tables

Foam Table 1I was inspired to have some more fun with folding by a question from this year’s American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) that turned triangles into tables and asked “How high can the table go?”.  (You can find the question here).

Investigating the problem seemed like more fun than solving it, so I cut out a triangle from some foam board and scored lines near the vertices.

Foam Triangle 2

Then I folded the corners and made the following table with an irregular hexagonal top!

Foam Fold

I made a few, to see what kinds of heights I could get.

Foam Tables

There are so many fun questions to explore here!  What comes to mind?

Related Posts

 

By patrick honner, ago

Math Quiz: NYT Learning Network

go-greenThrough Math for America, I am part of an on-going collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network.  My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here:

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/4/test-yourself-math-may-4-2011/

This question is based on a recent article about the dwindling consumer support for “Green” products.  Just how much does it cost us to “Go Green”?

By patrick honner, ago

Weather Forecast Accuracy Statistics

weatherThis website aims to evaluate the accuracy of various weather-prediction services while providing its own forecast:

http://forecastadvisor.com/

Using composite indices and statistical methods, data from sites like Accuweather and Weather.com  is analyzed and rated.

This is a good resource for an interesting group or individual project in statistics:  how accurate are the various services?  What is a “good” prediction?  How valuable is this information?  How can we use statistics to evaluate these questions?

Several years ago I read this post from the Freakonomics blog:  it details an informal study conducted by a man and his daughter who looked at seven months of TV weather forecasts in Kansas City and evaluated their accuracy.  The entire article is interesting, but the bottom line is best summed up in a quote from someone from one of the TV stations:  ““We have no idea what’s going to happen [in the weather] beyond three days out.”

By patrick honner, ago
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