Consider this problem: An absent-minded American mathematician has difficulty remembering his seven-digit phone number until he notices that, when he reverses the digits, he gets another seven-digit phone number that is a factor of his own phone number. After this point, he never has trouble with his number again. What is his phone number? (This…
Author: Clio
The Baby Shower game: A Square Deal
The Puzzle Here’s an interesting puzzle: The hostess of a baby shower devises a game in which sixteen tokens are placed in an opaque bag. The tokens are all either pink or blue, and they’re otherwise identical in shape, weight, texture, and so on. Two guests are chosen. The first guest chooses a single token…
Three three-digit numbers
Here’s a fun little problem: Find three three-digit numbers that use each non-zero numeral once and add up to 999. Follow-up: How many such sets of numbers exist? If you want, take a moment to work on the problem on your own. Then continue reading. Finding a solution For the first question, any set of…
Number terms
An interesting question on the G+ Mathematics community I co-moderate asked about the difference between “numbers” and “numerals”. We wound up discussing this at a party I was hosting (which shows the sort of nerds we are), and this post is born from those discussions and my further thoughts. It seems to me we have…
Some thoughts on circumference
This is the formula for the circumference of a circle: \[C = 2\pi r\] It’s very simple. My recollection of how it was taught is as a mystical relationship between \(\pi\) and the circumference, as if it were some magical truth that \(\pi\), of all numbers, would be the number that would satisfy the need…
Found Haiku
“It’s dinnertime, so I’m about to eat dinner. Butter is butter!” — jeh, age 3
Haiku
The nights are longer It’s harder to hold the sun Take heart: Two more weeks — ptkh 120912
An Experiment in Pronouns
Tee hated skim. Crystal knew that with all of ter heart: Tee hated Marcus, body and soul. The way that skee looked at tim, with that glib smirk, that cologne that skee wore in a cloud of sweet seduction, that swagger in sker step as skee stood by the coffee maker. And oh, how tee…
Haiku
December the ninth. A climate change souvenir: Rain, in Michigan — ptkh 120912
The Wanderer: The apple
The wanderer stopped at the side of the road, stooped down, and considered an apple that had settled itself into the muddy sluiceway. It did not appear to have come there naturally. There were apple trees in the distance, to be sure: Ghostly fingers reaching up into the late November sky, backed by a gray…