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Math Horizons - April 2010

Articles

Page 5 —Lipping Out and Laying Up: G.H. Hardy and J.E. Littlewood's Curious Encounters with the Mathematics of Golf
Roland Minton
Is it better to go around a lake in two shots or try to hit over with one swing? Can a putt really go "in and out" of the hole? Surprising answers from two very surprising sources.

Page 10 — The View from Here: Channeling Galois
Katharine Merow
If the Indian goddess Namagiri really provided Ramanujan with pages of exquisite theorems, then it isn’t an honor
violation for the spirit of Évariste Galois to offer a little assistance on exam problem 6b…Is it?

Page 12 —The Adventures of Π-Man: Measuring the Universe
Lawrence Brenton
Trained at the feet of Euclid and armed with only a pocket watch and yardstick, our superhero sets off to discover
the mass of the Earth, the shape of space, and the ultimate fate of the universe.

Page 16 — March Madness to Movies
Tim Chartier, Amy Langville, and Peter Simov
A ranking algorithm that demonstrated uncanny success forecasting the NCAA tournament is put to the test to
decide the best movie of the decade.

Page 20 —The Mobile Mathematical Society: Bringing Math to the People
Dan Silver
Inspired by the early days of England’s Royal Society, a history of mathematics class brings the spirit
of philosophical discourse back to life in the coffee houses of Mobile, Alabama.

Page 22— A Conversation with Archimedes
Ezra Brown
Eureka! Antiquity's greatest mathematician travels through time to set the record straight on the Archimedean solids, who invented calculus, why Euclid continues to dominate the best-seller lists, and just exactly what happened in that famous bathtub.

Page 25— A Dozen Harmonious Questions
James Tanton
A twelve-toned melody of problems composed around the theme of Pythagorus
and his harmonic sequence.

Page 31 — The Playground
The MH problems section, edited by Derek Smith

Page 34 — Aftermath: The Intermediate Under-Valued Theorem (click to read and respond)
Bruce Peterson
Applications of the Intermediate Value Theorem are completely obvious—except when they aren’t.