I visited Raymond Smullyan on my way home from Penn State. We went for lunch at Selena’s Diner. What do two mathematicians do during lunch? Exchange magic tricks and jokes, of course. Here is a story Raymond told me:
Raymond: What is the date?
Stranger: I do not know.
Raymond: But you have [...]
The MAA recently published a book, Mathematics Galore!, of creative classroom activities by James Tanton. These activities are great explorations for high school and motivated middle school students to work through alone, or for group work in Math Circles. I got a review copy of the book and instantly fell in love with it. I've [...]
My good friends, Scott and Jen, at Imagine Education have produced an educational film, The Biggest Story Problem. I had the opportunity recently to attend a private screening of the film. The documentary does an outstanding job of identifying a number of the issues that make the American math education system seriously challenged. Many of [...]
Consider central symmetry: squares and circles are centrally symmetric, while trapezoids and triangles are not. But if you have two trapezoids, which of them is more centrally symmetric? Can we assign a number to describe how symmetric a shape is?
Here is what I suggest. Given a shape A, find a centrally [...]