(A new question of the week) Suppose we have a question that can be answered with Yes, No, or Maybe, and that whenever two people with different opinions meet, their discussion convinces each of them that neither can be right, so they both change to the other opinion. Given initial numbers of people with each …
One of the more common questions we’ve been asked is, How can the product of two negative numbers be positive? Between this post and the next, I’ll put together many of the answers we have given, starting here with examples from the “real world” (gradually getting more abstract), and next time we’ll look at proofs. …
Negative x Negative = Positive? Concrete Illustrations Read More »
This week we’ll look at some Ask Dr. Math questions like, “How can a number be less than zero?” and “Why do we need negative numbers?” We’ll see a number of examples of their use, and how negative numbers make life easier.
(A new question of the week) Two recent questions involved using trigonometric functions to model real-life (or nearly so) situations, one about breathing, the other about a Ferris wheel. Both can be done by writing a sinusoidal function; the second can be done in other interesting ways as well.
(A new question of the week) It seems that most of the interesting questions recently have been about relatively advanced topics, though commonly in introductory classes. Here, we’ll help a student think through a problem introducing the idea of a random walk on a graph. (“Graph” here doesn’t mean the graph of an equation, which …
We’ve looked at what it means to multiply fractions, including whole and mixed numbers; now it’s time for division of fractions. We’ll start here with pictures, similar to what we did for multiplication, but a little more complicated. Then next time, we’ll see additional ways to understand why we “invert and multiply”.
Can you use mathematics to prove that the earth is round? That’s a question we get from time to time, sometimes from people who want to prove the earth is flat, sometimes from people who want to convince their friends otherwise, and sometimes just from students. Let’s think about it.
The next topic in our survey of fractions is the fact that two different fractions can represent the same number – that is, they can be equivalent, though they are written differently. At first, this may seem strange to students: the number 5 only has one “name”, so why should 1/2 and 2/4 be different …
We have been looking at ways to count possibilities (combinatorics), including a couple ways to model a problem using blanks to fill in. Today, we’ll consider a special model called Stars and Bars, which can be particularly useful in certain problems, and yields a couple useful formulas. (I only remember the method, not the formulas.)
(An archive problem of the week) A couple weeks ago, in discussing the value of estimates, I included one example of a (very simple) Fermi problem: one in which it is necessary to invent the data as well as the method of solution. Today, I will examine one answer in which we dug deeper into …