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By Angela in Platonic: I am happy that Mike is alive, but a little sad that after not checking the site for quite a while, I only had two comics to catch up on. Loved the video, though! I once wrote a poem about platonic duals dueling each other for love, but there is no snubbing involved. :) read in context
By Jason in Math Halloween Costume Idea 1: "Better" Algorithm: Everyone walk to me and give me your candy. O(1) for parallel servers. I think my professor wrote a paper on how to find a approximation for this... read in context
By smartalek in LEGO Math: This has all happened before. It will all happen again. But with TinkerToys. read in context
By smartalek in How to insult a mathematician: ^-- Like read in context
By smartalek in Pure math vs applied math: You mean whether to spell his name with or without the umlaut? I'm of two minds myself on that. read in context
By Andreï Kostyrka in LaTeX3 (Guest Comic): Oh my! You made my day! And the author of that LaTeX code is a Russian, too! read in context
By Shira B. in The Button: Money is human fiction. But life is too. I don't know... Money is nice. read in context
By Boaz G. in The Button: Why not press the button? People die at such a fast rate anyway, that pressing the button wouldn't make a difference. http://www.worldometers.info/ read in context
By Jason in Geeky pin numbers: Seriously! Ramanujan rocks! read in context
By Jason in Paradox Day: This is NOT a paradox. Hasnohat is correct. This is not another instance of the Adulterer problem because unlike the Adulterer problem, your information set at time t does not grow. Adulterer Problem: There is a Village of 40 monogamous heterosexual couples. All of the men in the village are law abiding and perfect logicians. Everyone in the village cheats on their partner, and every man knows about the infidelity of every person except his own wife. By village law, if a man knew their wife was unfaithful, he should kill her that night. One day a grand priest who only speaks the truth declares that he knows there is at least 1 unfaithful wife. On the 40th night, every man kills his wife. Why? Answer: Assume there is only 1 unfaithful wife. A man would always know of any woman's infidelity as long as that woman is not his wife. If that is true, there is a man who would not know ANY unfaithful women. Being a perfect logician, he would reason that HIS wife is the unfaithful one, and thus kill her that night. One night passes and no one was killed... If there was only 1 unfaithful wife, she would have been killed that night, so now the men assume there are 2 unfaithful wives. [THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PARADOX DAY QUESTION, SINCE WE CANNOT SEE INTO THE FUTURE, WE HAVE NO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AS TIME PROGRESSES]. If this is true, there would be 2 men who know ONLY 1 unfaithful woman. Those men would kill their wives on the 2nd night. Continuing in this fashion, 39 nights pass when no one was killed... On the 40th day, all the men must assume there are 40 unfaithful wives. As there are only 40 women in the village, every man kills his wife that night. Paradox Day: It is true that on Dec 30th, Dec 31th cannot be a paradox day. But on Dec 29th, you NO LONGER KNOW that Dec 31th cannot be a paradox day because the Dec 30th has yet to arrive with no Paradox day happening. I hope this clarifies the situation. Feel free to email me if you have any issues with my argument. read in context
By kim in Platonic: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha read in context
By Dominic Monaghan in Mathematical Modeling: Hi, i think that i saw you visited my site so i came to “return the favor”.I'm trying to find things to enhance my website!I suppose its ok to use a few of your ideas!! read in context
By Elijah Wood in Party: Valuable information. Fortunate me I discovered your web site by chance, and I'm stunned why this accident did not came about earlier! I bookmarked it. read in context
By Elijah Wood in I Like My Women Like I Like My Math: You made several nice points there. I did a search on the topic and found mainly people will go along with with your blog. read in context
By Elijah Wood in Complexity Theory: Pretty section of content. I just stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to assert that I get actually enjoyed account your blog posts. Anyway I’ll be subscribing to your feeds and even I achievement you access consistently rapidly. read in context
By Wilfred in Dear Professor: I have been checking out many of your posts and i can state clever stuff. I will make sure to bookmark your blog. read in context
By Royce Duey in Platonic: Thanks for sharing this, it was really helpful to me, I'll come back again for more soon. read in context
By judit in Platonic: hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi read in context
By bmonk in Platonic: Archimedes is spiraling in his grave? read in context
By Octo in Platonic: Holy muffins. Chiral Archimedean solids exist. Am I the only one who was not aware of this? read in context
By diamond in Platonic: i love everything n i love young b read in context
By Timos in Simple Area Quiz: In case you don't believe me, just consider circle vs. disk. read in context
By Anita in Simple Area Quiz: +1 Mike Lives. 1/2 a^2 sin(t) is the area of isosceles triangle. So equal angles to left and right of PI/2 will have same area. In this case, the if you drop perpendicular, you end up with two right triangles of lenghts 3,4,5 in both cases. With either 4,4 in base, or 3,3 in base. So if you know a pythagorean triple a,b,c. You can make triangles: "a, a, 2b", "a, a, 2c", to have same area provided "a" is the hypotenuse of original right triangle a,b,c. read in context
By Andreï Kostyrka in Simple Area Quiz: I should see the ophthalmologist. After some number of math articles, the title of this strip seemed to me as “Which has linear algebra”, which, of course, does make sense on this site. read in context
By Mathew in Simple Area Quiz: Assume the equal side lengths of the isosceles triangle are given by a, and the base is 2x. Then area A = 2x√(a^2-^2). To maximize the area, we set the first derivative equal to zero and solve to find the local extrema. Here, A' = (2a^2-4x^2)/√(a^2-x^2). Setting equal to zero and solving for x gives x = a/√2, implying the optimal base for maximum area is 2x = (√2)a. Note that this gives a right angle at the triangle's apex, and can be thought of as one half along the diagonal of a square with side lengths a. Here are the graphs of A and A'. read in context
By Platty in Simple Area Quiz: Thiiiis guuuy read in context
By nbl in Simple Area Quiz: you could just make a one of the bases and by drawing a bit, you'd realise the altitude has to be less than or equal to a, and indeed is a when it's a right-angled triangle. read in context
By Timos in Simple Area Quiz: Both circles have the same area, i.e., zero. read in context
By Ms. Maths in Simple Area Quiz: Mike, are you well? Have you been well? read in context
By Mike in Simple Area Quiz: So this got me wandering what size base for a general isosceles triangle will maximize the area. So, with just a little algebra and basic calculus techniques, I found that for an isosceles triangle whose sides are a, a and b. The b that will maximize the area, for a fixed a, is b = sqrt(2a^2). Also, The maximum area is (a^2)/2. So in the case given above, the base that will maximize area for a triangle whose other 2 sides are each 5 cm, will be sqrt(50) cm and the maximum area is 12.5 cm^2. read in context
By mrlescure in Simple Area Quiz: Except you've got to subtract all that black text. read in context
By Tomato Addict in Simple Area Quiz: All appear to be the same size. All three white boxes, that is. ;-) read in context
By lily in Simple Area Quiz: I see what you did there. For triangles and rectangles a good rule of thumb is: skinniness implies less volume read in context
By (x, why?) in Simple Area Quiz: And in the case of a-a-b, an isosceles triangle, the area is 1/2*(b)*(sqrt(a^2-(.5b)^2) -- which sounded much simpler in my mind before I typed it. read in context
By Hayley in Simple Area Quiz: I love these games read in context
By TehBT in Simple Area Quiz: from the facebook page: "It's been so long I forgot how to update my website :P Trivial puzzle for today folks, unless you are in grades 2-4, in which case I can provide hints." read in context
By Peter in Simple Area Quiz: s = (a+b+c)/2 area = (s-a)*(s-b)*(s-c) Peter. read in context
By Josh in Simple Area Quiz: A good way to think about the triangles question: If you take two 3-4-5 triangles and glue them together along the length 4 sides you get a 5-5-6 triangle, and if you glue them together along the length 3 sides you get a 5-5-8 triangle. read in context
By B in Simple Area Quiz: Mike is alive! +1 :D read in context
By CSCalciano in Simple Area Quiz: Ok I'm a freaking idiot. read in context
By Maggie in Simple Area Quiz: Yes, Heron's formula will give you the area of a triangle from the side lengths. A=Sqrt[s(s-a)(s-b)(s-c], where a,b&c are the side lengths and s is the semiperimeter or (a+b+c)/2. It was one I had memorized back in my high school math team days. You could almost guarantee that you'd need it somewhere in every tournament at the geometry level. read in context
By Martin Thoma in Simple Area Quiz: Don't you think that Herons formula is simple? read in context
By OmegaZxA in Simple Area Quiz: The triangles one really had me thinking for some 15 seconds while trying to mentally plot the corresponding rectangle. read in context
By tim in Simple Area Quiz: so is there a simple formula to find out whether a triangle of sides length a, b, c is larger or smaller than one of sides a, b, d ? read in context
By Edgardo in Simple Area Quiz: If you take the longer side as the base and split the triangle through the corresponding height, you can see that both triangles are the union of two 3,4,5 triangles. read in context
By Martin Thoma in Simple Area Quiz: I've create an image with both triangles: Triangle area read in context
By schunka in Simple Area Quiz: Yes it seems, but the triangles are kind of tricky. They covers the same area. read in context
By CSCalciano in Simple Area Quiz: Seems kind of obvious…1m, 1.2m, and 5/5/8…am I missing something/ read in context
By dook in Simple Area Quiz: MIKE LIVES! 8V read in context