Mathnasium of Amarillo had a nice follow up on the sum of angles type of puzzle.
“Find the total value of pink colored angles.”
Contributors to his twitter post provided not only my solution but another one that was specific to this particular configuration.
See More Sum of Angles for solutions.
Setting aside my chagrin that the following problem was given to pre-university students, I initially found the problem to be among the daunting ones that offer little information for a solution. It also was a bit “inelegant” to my way of thinking, since it involved considering some separate cases. Still, the end result turned out to be unique and satisfying (Talwalkar’s Note 2 was essential for a unique solution, since the problem as stated was ambiguous).
“Kshitij from India sent me this problem from the 1994 India Regional Mathematics Olympiad.
‘A leaf is torn from a paperback novel. The sum of the numbers on the remaining pages is 15000. What are the page numbers on the torn leaf?’
Note 1: a ‘leaf’ means a single sheet of paper.
Note 2: the quoted problem is actual wording from the competition. But let me add an important detail: the book is numbered in the usual sequential way starting with the first page as page 1.”
See the Missing Pages Puzzle for a solution.
This is a riff on a classic problem, given in Challenging Problems in Algebra.
“N. Bank and S. Bank are, respectively, the north and south banks of a river with a uniform width of one mile. Town A is 3 miles north of N. Bank, town B is 5 miles south of S. Bank and 15 miles east of A. If crossing at the river banks is only at right angles to the banks, find the length of the shortest path from A to B.
Challenge. If the rate of land travel is uniformly 8 mph, and the rowing rate on the river is 1 2/3 mph (in still water) with a west to east current of 1 1/3 mph, find the shortest time it takes to go from A to B. [The path across the river must still be perpendicular to the banks.]”
See the River Crossing for a solution.
Here is another imaginative geometry problem from Catriona Shearer’s twitter account.
“What fraction of the largest square is shaded?”
See the Cascading Squares Problem for a solution.
The issue 7 of the Chalkdust mathematics magazine had an interesting geometric problem presented by Matthew Scroggs.
“In the diagram, ABDC is a square. Angles ACE and BDE are both 75°. Is triangle ABE equilateral? Why/why not?”
I had a solution, but alas, the Scroggs’s solution was far more elegant.
See the Chalkdust Triangle Problem for solutions.
It is a bit presumptuous to think I could reduce the universe of mathematics to some succinct essence, but ever since I first saw a column in Martin Gardner’s Scientific American Mathematical Games in 1967, I thought his example illustrated the essential feature of mathematics, or at least one of its principal attributes. And he posed it in a way that would be accessible to anyone. I especially wanted to credit Martin Gardner, since the idea resurfaced recently, uncredited, in some attractive videos by Katie Steckles and James Grime. (This reminds me of the Borges idea that “eighty years of oblivion are perhaps equal to novelty”.) See the Essence of Mathematics.
Being born on February 29 I have always had an interest in the calendar and the mechanics of Leap Year. Since I am sure everyone knows about Leap Year, I will just rattle off a few trivia questions to stimulate the memory. Why was I excited about my birthday in 2000 when everyone knew it was a Leap Year, being 4 years after 1996? When I lived in Brazil, everyone referred to Leap Year as bissextile. What was that all about? After the Gregorian reform in 1582, how come George Washington’s mother recorded his birth in their family bible as 11 February 1731 when we say it is 22 February 1732 (whereas Abraham Lincoln’s mother recorded 12 February 1809 for her son, which we agree with)? See February 29.
Update (2/29/2020) Continue reading
