This is an awesome demonstration of world-wide trends in life expectancy by Hans Rosling. The graph uses regions of changing size, location, and color to show the dynamic history of the data.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHCt6PmSs0k
I happened upon this here, where there is much more appreciation of Rosling, the “zen master of presenting data”, and his work.
Suppose an organization is hosting a banquet with tables numbered 1 through 12, and they are looking for a fun, math-y way to get guests to their assigned table. So, when the guests arrive and find their name-card in the lobby, they must solve a simple math problem to determine their seating assignment.
It’s easy to figure out simple math problems whose answers are the numbers 1 through 12–the tough part is to do it in some uniform way, as with a theme. For example, a past theme for this event was to use mathematical expressions that only involved the number 4: thus, ( 4 / 4 ) would be table 1, or ( 4 ^ 4 – 4 / 4 ) / ( 4 + 4 – 4 / 4 ) would be table x.
My suggestion was to have a string of two of the four letters A,B,C, or D on each card in some order. A guest’s table number would then be that string’s position in the alphabetical order of all such strings (AB would be table 1, for example).
If you can think of something more interesting, the banquet isn’t until September. But it’s really 60 tables, not 12.
I’ve been shopping for a new cell phone (doesn’t yours have an antenna?) and it reminded me about cell phone plans and linear algebra.
Cell phone plans used to be the prototypical real world problem for high school math classes.
Plan A costs $10 a month plus 25 cents a minute, while Plan B costs $30 a month plus 12 cents a minute. Which plan should Sue Consumer choose?
Figure out the equations of some lines, find the intersection, make some conclusions. Math in action!
Fast forward to the present, and it’s embarrassing how confused I am by all the options: a serious multivariable analysis is necessary to figure out which plan is the right one for me. This was once an exemplar of simple, relevant application, but now it has become ugly with the real real world details.
In a heretofore unprecedented (?) move, the National Hockey League has rejected a contract between a player and a team. In this case, the NHL is trying to void the 17-year, $102 million contract between Ilya Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils. The NHL isn’t commenting right now, but they obviously see this contract as specifically designed to circumvent the spirit of the NHL’s salary cap. The gaming of the system in this manner has been going on for several years.
The salary cap is essentially a yearly limit on how much a team can spend on its players. The amount that an individual player counts toward this limit (that player’s “cap hit”) is easy to compute: it’s the total value of that player’s contract divided by the total number of years on that contract. In other words, a player’s cap hit is the average salary per year of his contract.
You don’t have to think very hard to figure out how to game this system: instead of signing a player to a 10-year, $100 million contract, pay them the minimum possible salary ($500K) for 4 extra years and sign them to a 14-year, $102 million contract. Now, instead of a $10 million cap hit per year, the player has a $7.3 million cap hit per year, allowing the team a lot more financial flexibility. Do the Devils really expect Kovalchuk to play in year 17 of his contract, when he’s 44 years old? Probably not.
You could drive a zamboni through this loophole.
An amusing, informal analysis of British Open coverage by the BBC and ESPN: Now with 50% more golf!
http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-context-and-content.html
Courtesy of Jorn Barger at robotwisdom.