Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog

Here is a math puzzle for kids from a nice collection of ThinkFun Visual Brainstorms:

Wendy has cats. All but two of them are Siamese, all but two of them are Persian, and all but two of them are Maine Coon. How many cats does Wendy have altogether?

This puzzle has two answers: the expected answer and an unexpected answer. Can you find both?

Chris Burke gave me his permission to add his webcomics to my collection of Funny Math Pictures.

This comic doesn’t qualify as a math picture, but it is geeky enough for me to like it.

Here is an arithmetic problem for you:

You have $700 dollars in your checking account. You are sloppy and forget how much you have. You write three checks for $600, $200 and $200. For every bounced check you are fined $25 by your bank. How much in fines will you have to pay for your sloppiness?

Solution: the fine depends on the transaction order. If they process your $600 check first, you will have two bounced checks. If they process a $200 check first, then only your $600 check will bounce.

The question is, what will your bank do if all three checks need to be processed at the same time? There are three options:

• Your bank doesn’t have a good mathematician on the staff and is not aware of this situation, and it processes the checks in random order. In this case you will have either two bounced checks (with a probability of 1/3) or one bounced check (with a probability of 2/3).
• Your bank is evil, and purposefully processes your $600 check first. In this case you are guaranteed to have two bounced checks.
• Your bank cares about its soul and purposefully processes the $600 check last. In this case you are guaranteed to get only one bounced check.

Assuming the worst — your bank is evil — what is the answer to the problem? Do you think you will be fined $50? If so, you are wrong. The company to whom you wrote the check will fine you too. Supposing that the company has the same $25 fine as the bank, can we say that you will be fined $100? Nope, this is not correct either. You are forgetting that companies will reprocess your bounced checks two days later and the checks will bounce again. You will be fined twice for each check by two different entities. Thus, you can face $200 in fines.

My next question is: what do you think is a fair fine in my arithmetic problem above?

Banks and companies have never heard of double jeopardy and do not think that it is unconstitutional to fine you twice for the same mistake. No doubt, the second reprocessing of your checks is done “for your convenience”. “For your convenience” they assume that the bouncing was due to a computer glitch, so they should reprocess your check immediately after it has bounced. “For your convenience” no-one will disturb you to notify you that your checks are bouncing. I also believe that if your fine depends on the random order of processing of checks, the banks should be graceful and shouldn’t pick the more profitable order for themselves. I do think that charging you more than $50 in my example is against the law and is not fair.

The law should protect us against entities that rob us “for our convenience.”

I added some new jokes to my collection of math, computer and geek humor:

* * *

— What do you do to protect yourselves from viruses?
— We use disposable computers …

* * *

Microsoft offers a new service. They sell ad spots in their error messages.

* * *

Sysadmin:
— I do not care if everyone insists that using the name of my own cat as a password is a bad idea! RrgTt_fx32!b, kitty-kitty-kitty …

* * *

Due to technical difficulties the release of Windows 2000 is delayed until February 1901.

* * *

A doctor looking at patient’s X-rays:
— Hmm, multiple hip fractures, tibia and fibula fractures. Oh well, Photoshop can fix all that.

* * *

After learning how much money Bill Gates has, Satan offered him his own soul.

* * *

Question: What did one math book say to the other?
Answer: Don’t bother me. I have my own problems.

* * *

Student: Teacher, would you punish me for something I didn’t do?
Teacher: No, why?
Student: I didn’t do my homework.

* * *

— My teacher said we would have a test today, rain or shine.
— Then why are you so happy?
— Because it’s snowing.

* * *

Question: How many sides does a box have?
Answer: Two — the inside and the outside.

* * *

Question: What did the calculator say to everyone?
Answer: You can count on me.

Just updated my collection of Funny Math Pictures.

Here is a puzzle that my ex-brother-in-law, Dodik, gave to me today:

Prove that every group with more than two elements has a non-trivial automorphism.

I usually love puzzles that are solved with a counter-intuitive brilliant idea. This puzzle is different — I didn’t solve it in one elegant swoop. But I still love the puzzle: it feels so natural, and it’s solution feels so natural, that I even decided to call this puzzle “organic.” Or, maybe, I am just in an organic mood today waiting for my organic bananas to be delivered from Boston Organics.

Here is a funny puzzle from Kvant (1996, vol 4), the best Russian journal of recreational math.

When Alice goes through the looking-glass, she might meet many multi-headed, multi-armed, multi-legged beings. A being with H heads, A arms and L legs is considered:

• smart, if H > A+L,
• strong, if A > H+L,
• fast, if L > H+A.

Can there exist a well-rounded personality behind the looking-glass: someone who is smart, strong and fast at the same time?

Once I witnessed John H. Conway factoring large numbers in his head. Impressed, I stared at him. Encouraged by my interest, he told me that if I ever want to be able to factor large numbers, I should know all the primes below one thousand.

The secret to knowing all such primes is to remember the composites, he continued. Obviously, we don’t need to remember trivial composites — the ones divisible by 2, 3, 5, or 11. Also, everyone knows all the squares below one thousand, so we can count squares as trivial composites. We only need to remember the non-trivial composites. There are not that many of them below one thousand — only 70. I mean, 70 is nothing compared to the number of primes: 168.

So, I need to remember the following seventy numbers:

91, 119, 133, 161, 203, 217, 221, 247, 259, 287, 299, 301, 323, 329, 343, 371, 377, 391, 403, 413, 427, 437, 469, 481, 493, 497, 511, 527, 533, 551, 553, 559, 581, 589, 611, 623, 629, 637, 667, 679, 689, 697, 703, 707, 713, 721, 731, 749, 763, 767, 779, 791, 793, 799, 817, 833, 851, 871, 889, 893, 899, 901, 917, 923, 931, 943, 949, 959, 973, 989.

If you are very ambitious and plan to learn the primes up to 50,000, then the trick of learning non-trivial composites instead of primes is of no use to you. Indeed, for larger numbers the density of primes goes down, while the density of non-trivial composites stays about the same or increases very slightly due to a smaller number of squares.

The turning point is around 11,625: the number of primes below 11,625 equals the number of non-trivial composites below it. So, compare your ambition to 11,625 and tailor your path of learning accordingly.

If you are lazy, you can learn primes only up to 100. In this case your path is clear; you should stick with remembering non-trivial composites, for you need to remember only one number: 91.

One of Microsoft’s biggest contributions to humanity is the popularization of manhole covers. The most famous question that Microsoft asks during job interviews of geeks is probably, “Why are manhole covers round?” Supposedly the right answer is that if a manhole cover is round it can’t be dropped into the hole. See, for example, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft’s Cult of the Puzzle – How the World’s Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers. This book by William Poundstone is dedicated exclusively to Microsoft’s interview puzzles.

All we need, actually, is for the cover not to fit into the hole. For example, if the hole is small, the cover could be almost any shape, as long as the diameter of the cover is bigger than any straight segment that fits into the hole.

Microsoft makes an implicit assumption that the cover is about the same shape and size as the hole; otherwise we would waste a lot of extra cover material.

Even with this assumption, there is a good deal of flexibility in possible shapes if our only concern is that the cover shouldn’t fit into the hole. It is sufficient for the cover to be any shape with a constant width.

Here are some additional answers to why the cover should be round. Microsoft accepts the answer that a round cover is easier to roll. I’m not sure why a cover would ever have to be moved away from its hole. But I agree that if kids try to steal a cover, it would be much easier to escape with a round one.

Another answer that Microsoft supposedly accepts is that you do not need to rotate a round cover to align it with the opening when you are putting it back. This way if there is a lane divider painted on the cover it will point in a new random direction.

You can find many other explanations at the wiki article devoted to this subject. The most reasonable is that manhole covers are round because manholes are round. Duh!

Thanks to Microsoft there are now many websites with pictures of and discussions on the shape of manhole covers. For example, Manhole Covers Etc. or Manhole.ca or Manhole Covers of the World. As you can see many manhole covers are square or rectangular. They say that New Hampshire had triangular covers at some point.

But my favorite answer to this interview question was sent to me by Jorge Tierno:

Since manhole covers are not necessarily round, but you are asking why they are round, you are probably asking why round manhole covers are round. Round manhole covers are round by definition.

Now I have my own favorite question to ask you during a job interview: “Why are some manhole covers square?”

For his Master’s thesis, my son Alexey Radul wrote the Symmetriad — a computer program to compute and display highly symmetric objects.

The objects the Symmetriad is after are the 4D generalizations of Platonic and Archimedean solids. His thesis contains a picture gallery made with the Symmetriad, and these are my three favorite pictures.

The pictures have cute titles. The problem is that I still haven’t installed the WordPress plugin that allows me to put captions under the pictures. That is why you have to guess which title matches which picture. The titles are: “The Planets are Aligned,” “Great Jaws,” and “Diamonds are Forever.”

If you are wondering why one of the pictures shows a non-connected object, in fact the object is connected, but some of the edges are white, so that you can better see 3D cells of the object.

Subsequent to the publication of this thesis, Alexey enhanced his software to make even more dramatic pictures. The following pictures have no titles, so feel free to suggest some:

I think it would be nice to publish a book with all these pictures. As a book on symmetries should be published on a symmetric date, the next opportunity would be 01.02.2010.