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Science News
August 23, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
SET Math The card game known as SET is deceptively simple. Invented in 1974 by population geneticist Marsha Jean Falco, the game has become a popular, even addictive pastime for both children and adults. It has also attracted mathematical attention.   |
PC Magazine
September 2, 2003
Barry Simon |
Mathematica 5.0 Adds Up Exactly 15 years after Mathematica's initial release, Wolfram Research has released Mathematica 5.0. |
Science News
August 9, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Running Lanes and Extra Steps When going out to your local running track for a workout, you sometimes find that you are allowed to use only certain lanes for training. On a standard quadrant track, however, the outer lanes are longer than the inner lanes. That presents a problem for someone using the track for speed workouts. |
Science News
July 26, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Perfect Pyramids A group of tetrahedra that some people consider special consists of those that have integer edge lengths, face areas, and volumes. Such a solid is sometimes called a Heronian tetrahedron or a perfect pyramid. |
Wired
August 2003
Tom McNichol |
Totally Random How two math geeks with a lava lamp and a webcam are about to unleash chaos on the Internet. |
Science News
July 12, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Improving the Odds in RISK RISK is a classic board game of global conquest. First published in 1959, this war game remains popular and continues to attract mathematical attention. Recent analyses reveal that the chances of winning a battle are considerably more favorable for the attacker. |
Science News
July 5, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Alphamagic Squares Magic squares have fascinated people for thousands of years. They consist of a set of whole numbers arranged in a square so that the sum of the numbers is the same in each row, in each column, and along each diagonal. A twist on the concept, the alphamagic square, is interesting, too. |
Science News
June 28, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Theorems in Wheat Fields The architects of certain crop circles near Stonehenge seem to show an uncanny facility with Euclidean geometry. |
Science News
June 21, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
Prime-Time Cicadas The fact that periodical cicadas emerge after a prime number of years could be just a coincidence. Or it might reflect some sort of evolutionary pressure that leads to prime-number cycles. |
Science News
June 7, 2003
Ivars Peterson |
A Dog, a Ball, and Calculus Mathematician Timothy J. Pennings of Hope College in Holland, Mich., posits that his dog, fetching a ball thrown into a lake, appears to compute the optimal path to his target in much the same way that a mathematician would using calculus. |
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