Math
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The shortest distance
A ship is sinking. “How far is it to land ?” a panicking passenger asks the captain. “500 meters” anwers the captain. “What a relief answers the passenger. I am a trained swimmer. In which direction do I have to swim ?” “Straight down” answers the captain. (uit Argument 3 leerboek Meetkunde, ISBN 9789045533643)
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De kortste afstand
Een schip is aan het zinken. “Hoe ver is het dichtsbijzijnde land ?” vraagt een passagier in paniek aan de kapitein. “Vijfhonderd meter”, antwoordt de kapitein. “Valt dat mee”, zegt de passagier opgelucht. “Ik ben een geoefend zwemmer. In welke richting moet ik zwemmen ?” “Naar beneden” antwoordt de kapitein. (uit Argument 3 leerboek Meetkunde,…
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Understanding Geometry: A Parent’s Journey Through Math
While I was in high school myself I never much cared to put a lot of time in learning geometry. Now, with our youngest in 3rd grade struggling with mathematics I decided I should at least read his geometry text book so I know what he is supposed to know. I finished the first 60…
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Evariste Galois. 1811-1832, Laura Toti Rigatelli (ISBN 978-3-7643-5410-7, Birkhäuser)
I found this biography of Evariste Galois after reading about him in Eric Temple Bell’s Men of Mathematics. It is part of the Vita Mathematica series of the publisher with biographies of mathematicians, most of them published in German. The author is an Italian professor in mathematics with a special interest in the history of…
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Bombelli’s formula to calculate the square root of 2
We owe following formula to Bombelli, approximately 1572 :
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Some strange formulas containing pi
A couple of series to calculate pi, first one is from Leibniz
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pi approximations
Some approximations for pi :
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The Tesseract: Origin, Meaning, and Its Marvel Connection
I first heard of the term Tesseract in the movie Captain America: The First Avenger. The Tesseract is also called the cube in the movie and it contains the space stone, one of the six infinity stones. In the movie The Avengers it is used to create a wormhole to allow the Chitauri to invade…
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Understanding Mathematics: A Journey of Familiarity
‘In mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.‘― John von Neumann
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