Math Horizons - April 2007 | Mathematical Association of America

Articles

From the Editors

Dear Readers,

Nobody reads the Letter from the Editors! So if you are reading this, then please stop reading it right now. We warned you.

If this issue of Math Horizons looks a little funny to you, it's because it was intended that way. Our theme is April Fools, and as a result, most of the content is satirical, paradoxical, or simply humorous. The centerpiece of this issue is our first issue of the tabloid Mathematical Enquirer, where everything is bogus.

So don't believe everything you read—including this letter. You've been warned!

Jenny and Art

Team Minnesota Sculpts Winning Mathematical Art
Stan Wagon
How to sculpt the perfect ice cube.

Pythagoras’s Darkest Hour
Colin Adams
Truth, betrayal, and hemlock!

Hide and Seek
Andy Martin
Drawing a circle around every rational number covers every irrational number right?

When Lions Battle
Nicholas Tasaday
New documents suggest a Newton-Leibniz collaboration.

A Dozen Questions About A Dozen
James Tanton
Twelve tricky tributes to the “Tantonian number” twelve.

Mathematical Enquirer
Gary Gordon, Dan Kalman, Liz McMahon, Roger B. Nelsen, and Bruce Reznick
MAA’s first mathematics tabloid.

If the IRS had discovered the quadratic formula…
Daniel J. Velleman
Solving a quadratic can be as easy as doing your taxes.

Book Reviews
Jacob McMillen and Michael Flake
Students review The Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems and Mathematical Fallacies, Flaws, and Flimflam.

Whodunit?
Ezra Brown
Who proved l’Hôpital’s rule, and other tricky questions.

Statistician’s Blues—
Larry Lesser
A mean song about statistical love and significant loss.

Problem Section
Andy Liu

New Mathematical Definitions and Contest
Ken Suman
A contest to discover better mathematical definitions.