Maths Blooper No. 1
This is just one example of some very funny errors I found on the “OnlineMathLearning.com” Web site.
(√5 + 1)/2
This number is called the “Golden Ratio”, or the “Divine Proportion”. The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers has 4 ½ pages dedicated to this number. It’s really popular among mathematicians, but artists also find it interesting and very useful.
Trick No. 2 – Dividing with Zeros
Numbers ending in zeros are just multiples of ten (or one hundred, or one thousand…) To divide with a number ending in zeros, ignore the zeros, do your division, then cancel the same number of zeros from the left and the right of the problem*
What’s a Googol?
These days, “Google” is a well-known search engine on the Internet. The name “Google” is a play on the word Googol*, which is the name for a number written as 1 followed by 100 zeros!
It looks like this:
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
It’s easy to write it out; doesn’t take long at all. But if you [...]
A Moral Tale*
There have been many claims for horsed that could count, but Sugar left them all far behind. He could count to one hundred, and also add, subtract, multiply and divide. Unfortunately, his master decided to try him on some elementary anaylytic geometry, which so frightened him that he ran off and was never seen again.
Moral: [...]
Fear of Maths?
I found a fascinating Web site about the fear of maths and I have borrowed the following excerpt from there:
The History of Nothing
Imagine if there were no number “zero”. How would you know whether “23″ meant “23″ or “203″ or “230″? Or even “2030000″? The number and the character that we know as zero hasn’t been around forever. The Babylonians, in the 2nd century BC, used to use a pair of “wedges” to indicate an empty space, [...]
Trick No. 1 – Multiplying with Zeros
Numbers ending in zeros are just multiples of ten (or one hundred, or one thousand…) To multiply by a number ending in zeros, just ignore the zeros, do your multiplication, then add the zeros back on!
The Silver Abacus
I don’t actually use an abacus to teach maths; I barely know how to use one myself, although I’ve said for ages that I’d like to learn. The slogan on this Web site: “Maths the Way Nature Intended” is just a bit of fun. I have no idea where the idea for that tag line [...]
New Year, New You!
The start of a new year brings the dreamers out in all of us. This year, put your money where your mouth is, and make sure your maths skills are up to speed. Often an hour or two is all that stands between success and failure. Get help early in the term and watch your [...]