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The ballots have been counted and recounted, no chad has been left unturned.
The winners of the Math
Horizons World Wide Web Treasure Hunt are:
Erica Voolich of the Solomon Schechter Day School,
Scott Hunter and Susan Strickland of St. Mary's College of Maryland, and
Kim Groshong of Ashland University. Erica
and Scott were the only entrants to answer all 15 questions correctly.
Kim was one of several to correctly answer 14 of 15, her submission is
included below so that you can see the correct answers.
Each of these three has been sent one of the coveted (and handsome) Math
Horizons t-shirts.
Honorable Mention
(at least 13 correct answers) to:
Kristine Harootunian, St. Lawrence University
Catherine Timmins, Aycock Middle School
Solomon Willis, Shelby, NC
Ali Bukhari, Meriden, CT
Sara Wood, St. Lawrence University
Farhad Farzad
Amanda Febey, St. Olaf College
Josh Harris, Greensboro, NC
Lynelle Weldon, Andrews University
Gretchen Koch, St. Lawrence University
Charlotte Knotts-Zides’s Calculus class, Wofford College
Vivek Bachhawat, St. Lawrence University.
Many thanks to all
for playing.
Steve Kennedy
1.
How many
0’s are in the First Million Digits of Pi?
Answer:
125505
Source: “Here are the first million digits of pi. The distribution
of digits is as follows:
digit 0: 125505”
Website: http://www.cs.williams.edu/~bailey/pi.html
Editor’s
Note: This was the most common error (and the only one Kimberly,
and many others, made). Many people
quoted Professor Bailey’s website without really thinking about it.
Please note that pi appears to be “normal,” that is all digits occur
with equal frequency, so one should expect about 100,000 zeroes in any million
digit block. In fact, there are
exactly 99,959. See
If we assume that pi is normal (this is not known),
then the probability that about one-eighth of the first million digits of its
decimal expansion are zeroes would be incredibly small.
Note also that the digits reported by Bailey add up to way more than a
million.
2.
What was
the average starting salary in 1999 for math graduates with a bachelor’s
degree?
Answer: about $37,300
Source:
“According to 1999 survey by National Association of College and
Employers, starting salary for those with B.S. average about $37,300”
Website: http://stats.bls.gov/oco/ocos043.htm
Editor’s
Note: Lots of different answers to this one ranging all the way up
to $62,000. Check out:
http://www-physics.ucsd.edu/~griest/salarystart99.html
www.csuchico.edu/plc/anrep989.html
http://www.jobweb.org/pubs/JobOutlook/salaries.html
http://www.bridgew.edu/depts/carplan/appdxd.htm
http://www.cdc.rpi.edu/Employers/Recruit_Stats/accept_salaries.html
http://www.career.gatech.edu/employer/graduates/salaries.html
http://www.gradlink.edu.au/gradlink/gcca/media10.htm
3.
By what nickname is Leonardo Pisano better known?
Answer: Leonardo Pisano is also known as the famous Fibonacci
Source: “Who was Fibonacci? The
"greatest European mathematician of the middle ages", his full name
was Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Pisano in Italian since he was born in Pisa
(Italy), the city with the famous Leaning Tower, about 1175 AD. He called
himself Fibonacci [pronounced fib-on-arch-ee or fee-bur-narch-ee] short for
filius Bonacci which means son of Bonacci. Since Fibonacci in Latin is "filius
Bonacci" and means "the son of Bonacci", two early writers on
Fibonacci (Boncompagni and Milanesi) regard Bonacci as the family name so that
Fib-Bonacci is like the English names of Robin-son or John-son. Fibonacci
himself wrote both "Bonacci" and "Bonaccii" as well as
"Bonacij"! Others think Bonacci may be a kind of nick-name meaning
"lucky son" (literally, "son of good fortune").”
Website:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibBio.html
4.
What is
the name of the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes and what does it have to
do with the Pentium chip?
Answer: Brun’s Sum, also called Brun’s constant, is the name of
the sum of reciprocals of twin primes. Dr.
Thomas Nicely determined this constant to be approximately equal to 1.902165778+2.1X10^-9.
While searching for a more accurate Brun’s Constant, Dr. Nicely
discovered the Pentium bug, which happened to be noted after more than a million
PC’s had already been distributed with the faulty processor.
It cost Intel 475 million dollars to rectify the situation.
Source: “Brun's sum is the sum of the reciprocals of the twin
primes… Dr.
Thomas Nicely is a math professor at Lynchburg University in Virginia. He is one of the leaders in the search for Twin Primes and a
more and more accurate Brun's Constant, and it was during his research that he
discovered the "Pentium Bug" in 1995, I believe. He shouldn't be
famous for that, though - his ideas are fantastic, and his Twin Prime research
is way over my head. I like the simpler ideas.”
Website:
http://www.telisphere.com/~prime/
5.
Of the
250 jobs ranked recently by a job-rating publication, how many of the top ten
jobs were math or computer science related?
Answer: 9 out of the top 10
Source: “Nine of the top 10 jobs were in computer or math-related
fields, with Web site managers at the top of the heap.”
Website:
http://departments.juniata.edu/csmath/topjobspage.htm
Editor’s
Note: Lots of different
acceptable answers here, too. I
received answers ranging from 6 to 11!
Answer: 4(8/9)^2 = 3.16
Source: “In the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus, which is dated about 1650
BC,
Website:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Pi_through_the_ages.html
7.
How many
hours of computer time did Appel and Haken use for the final proof of the
Four-Color Theorem?
Answer: 1,200 hours
Source: “…the four-color map problem was solved (more or less)
using a computer by two prairie geniuses at the University of Illinois at
Champaign-Urbana, Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel. The four-color map problem, as all mathematically hip
personages know, is to determine whether there is any map that requires the use
of more than four different colors if you want to avoid having adjacent regions
be the same color. A matter of no great consequence, you might think, but this
is the sort of thing that fascinates math aficionados--in this case for well
over a century. Haken and Appel proved that (as was widely suspected) four
colors are all you ever need. Cecil
would be pleased to reproduce H&A's proof here, except that it took 1,200
computer hours and a zillion cubic yards of printout paper to do, so you're just
going to have to take my word for it. Basically what the computer did was check
out all the possible map combinations by trial and error.
Website: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_126b.html
Answer: 2,098,960 digits in the 38th Mersenne prime
Source: “As of 1 June 1999, the largest know prime is the 2,098,960
digit Mersenne prime 2^6972593-1”
Website:
http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/notes/by_year.html
9.
Who said
“there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics?”
Answer: Godfrey H. Hardy
Source: “Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
The
mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful;
the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way.
Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly
mathematics.
A
Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.”
Website:
http://math.furman.edu/~mwoodard/mqs/form.html
Answer: Faber and Faber today issues a $1,000,000 challenge to prove
Goldbach's Conjecture. The contest
is to publicize a new book as well as drawing interest in finding a solution to
this famous problem.
Source: “Goldbach's Conjecture was first stated in 1742 in a letter written by Christian Goldbach to the great Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler. The Conjecture is popularly represented as the conjecture that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes. Although Euler spent much time trying to prove it, he never succeeded. For the next 250 years, other mathematicians would struggle in similar fashion. The proof has not been found to this day, and Goldbach's Conjecture is acknowledged to be one of the most notoriously difficult problems in all of mathematics. On 20 March 2000, Faber and Faber are publishing Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture, the wonderful and already acclaimed novel by Apostolos Doxiadis. It has been described by John Nash, Nobel Prize Winner as 'a fascinating picture of how a mathematician could fall into a mental trap by devoting his efforts to a too difficult problem' and by George Steiner as 'deeply generous. It allows the lay-reader lucid access to intrinsically closed worlds.' To celebrate publication, we are offering a prize of $1million to any person who can prove Goldbach's Conjecture within the next two years* This challenge is issued in conjunction with Bloomsbury Publishing, USA, the book's American publisher. For further information on the publicity concerning the challenge, please call Judith Hillmore on 0171 465 7554 or e-mail her at [email protected] Details of how to enter are available with the Rules of the Challenge, or on the Faber and Faber website.
*In
the event that no satisfactory proof of Goldbach's Conjecture is offered in
accordance with the Rules of the Challenge, the reward will not be awarded. No
book purchase required.”
Website: http://www.apostolosdoxiadis.com/million.htm
11.
What is lucky about the number
2187 and why does Martin Gardner care?
Answer: Every even number is the sum of two lucky numbers.
Lucky numbers are an unusual sequence identified by Stanislaw Ulam around
1955. 2187 is a lucky number and
Martin Gardner’s childhood home had this house number.
This lucky number has many remarkable properties identified by Gardner.
Source: “Around 1955, the
mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1984) identified a particular sequence made
up of what he called "lucky numbers," and mathematicians
have been playing with them ever since.
Starting
with a list of integers, including 1, the first step is to cross out every
second number: 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on, leaving only the odd integers. The second
integer not crossed out is 3. Cross out every third number not yet eliminated.
This gets rid of 5, 11, 17, 23, and so on. The third surviving number from the
left is 7; cross out every seventh integer not yet eliminated: 19, 39,....
Now, the fourth number from the beginning is 9. Cross out every
ninth number not yet eliminated, starting with 27.
1 3 7 9 13 15 21 25 31 33 37 43 49 51 63 67 69 73 75 79 87 93 99 105
111 115 127 129 133 135 141 151 159 163 169 171 189 193 195
What’s
remarkable is that the "luckies," though generated by a sieve based
entirely on a number’s position in an ordered list, share many properties with
primes. For example, there are 25 primes less than 100 and 23 luckies less than
100. Indeed, it turns out that primes and luckies come up about equally often
within given ranges of integers. The distances between successive primes and the
distances between successive luckies also keep increasing as the numbers
increase. In addition, the number of twin primes -- primes that differ by 2 --
is close to the number of twin luckies.
Perhaps
the most famous unsolved problem involving primes is the Goldbach conjecture,
which states that every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two primes.
Luckies are featured in a similar conjecture, also unsolved: Every even number
is the sum of two luckies. Computer searches
How did the topic of lucky numbers happen to come up? The house where Gardner grew up in Tulsa, Okla., had the address 2187 S. Owasso. "Of course I never forgot this number," he says. It also happens to be one of the lucky numbers. Gardner’s imaginary friend, the noted numerologist Dr. Irving Joshua Matrix, can readily find additional remarkable properties associated with that number. Exchange the last two digits of 2187 to make 2178, multiply by 4, and you get 8712, the second number backwards. Take 2187 from 9999 and the result is 7812, the number in reverse. Moreover, the first four digits of the constant e, 2718, and the number of cubic inches in a cubic foot, 12^3 = 1728, are each permutations of 2187!”
Website:
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc97/9_6_97/mathland.htm
12.
What is special about the sequence, 5,8,15,77,125, 714, and 948,…?
Answer: This sequence contains the first element in the pair of
Ruth-Aaron numbers, which are the sum of prime divisors of n= sum of prime
divisors of n+1
Source: “Playing with Ruth-Aaron Pairs
On
April 8, 1974, Henry (Hank) Aaron hit his 715th major league home run,
surpassing the previous mark of 714 career home runs long held by baseball great
Babe Ruth. Understandably, the event received considerable coverage in
newspapers and magazines and on television.
However, those reports invariably overlooked the mathematical aspects of that achievement, particularly the curious properties of the two numbers 714 and 715. It took the efforts of mathematicians Carol Nelson, David E. Penney, and Carl Pomerance at the University of Georgia to call attention to this facet.
Notice
that 714 = 2 x 3 x 7 x 17 and 715 = 5 x 11 x 13; so 714 x 715 = 2 x 3 x 5 x 7 x
11 x 13 x 17. In other words, the
product of the two consecutive whole numbers 714 and 715 is equal to the product
of the first seven prime numbers!
Pomerance
and his colleagues wondered whether there were other pairs of consecutive
numbers whose product is also the product of the first k primes. The first few
instances are easy to find: 1 and 2 (1 x 2 = 2), 2 and 3 (2 x 3 = 2 x 3), 5 and
6 (5 x 6 = 2 x 3 x 5), 14 and 15 (14 x 15 = 2 x 3 x 5 x 7), and 714 and 715. The
mathematicians then used a computer to search for such pairs, going as far as
products of the first 3,049 primes (numbers up to 6,021 digits long). They found
no more examples in that range.
Footnote:
On April 26, 1974, Aaron hit his 15th grand slam home run, breaking the old
National League record of 14.
And
there's more. Notice that the sum of the prime factors of 714 is 2 + 3 + 7 + 17
= 29, and the sum of the prime factors of 715 is 5 + 11 + 13 = 29. How often do
two consecutive numbers have prime factors that add up to the same total?
Pomerance
and his coworkers conducted another computer search, looking for such pairs up
to a value of 20,000.
Here
are the first few examples:
Numbers, Sums
5,
6 5 = 2 +
3
8, 9 2 + 2 +
2 = 3 + 3
15, 16
3 + 5 = 2 + 2 + 2 + 2
77, 78
7 + 11 = 2 + 3 + 13
125, 126
5 + 5 + 5 = 2 + 3 + 3 + 7
714, 715
29
948, 949
86
Pomerance
called these pairs Aaron numbers, and he speculated that such pairs become less
frequent as their size increases. However, he didn't have a mathematical proof
quantifying their scarcity.”
Website: http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathland_6_30.html
13.
What famous mathematical event
occurred on the morning of August 8, 1900?
Answer: David Hilbert delivered A lecture before the International
Congress of Mathematicians in Paris on this date. In this lecture David Hilbert, proposed his now famous 23
problems.
2 Sources and
websites:
1. The
1998 International Congress Mathematicians in Berlin was a "best
approximation" to the first centennial of David Hilbert's hugely
influential set of twenty-three problems, presented at the International
Congress of Mathematicians in Paris, in August 1900.
http://topo.math.u-psud.fr/~lcs/Hilbert/HContest.htm
2.
In
German,
Der
unten folgende Text des Hilbertschen Vortrags vom 8. August 1900 erschien
erstmals in den Nachrichten der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu
Göttingen,
English
translation: That below following text of the Hilbertschen lecture of the 8.
August 1900 appeared in the news for the first time the royal society of the
sciences to Göttingen,
http://www.mathecafe.de/hilbertprobleme.html
14.
How many solids exist whose faces
are identical and regular, and whose vertices each have the same number of faces
incident on them? (These solids
need not be Platonic: Platonic
solids have the added requirement of being convex)
Answer: 9
Source: “All mathematicians are familiar with the Platonic solids:
the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron. The dodecahedron, and the icosahedron.
These are the five convex solids all of whose faces are identical regular
polygons. Considerably less well
known are the solids obtained when the above conditions are relaxed…On the
other hand, if the faces are required to be identical regular polygons, but the
solid is not required to be convex, we obtain the four Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra.”
Website: http://www.ams.org/new-in-math/cover/polyhedra.html
15.
Who was the first woman in the U.S. to earn a PhD in mathematics?
Answer: Winifred Edgerton
Source: “September 24, 1862 - September 6, 1951
Winifred Edgerton, the first American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics, was born in Ripon, Wisconsin. She was a direct descendent of Elder William Brewster of Plymouth Colony. She received her early education from private tutors before earning her B.A. degree from Wellesley College in 1883. After some work at Harvard she was allowed to study mathematics and astronomy at Columbia University. At the end of her second year she petitioned to receive a Ph.D. degree, having fulfilled the required credits and written an original thesis that dealt with geometric interpretations of multiple integrals and translations and relations of various systems of coordinates. Her work in mathematical astronomy included computation of the orbit of the comet of 1883. Despite the support of President Barnard, a campaigner for women's education, the board of trustees refused her application. Barnard suggested that Edgerton personally talk to each trustee. This effort proved successful and at the next meeting the board unanimously voted to award her the Ph.D. in mathematics, which she received in 1886 with highest honors. On the fiftieth anniversary of her graduation from Wellesley, a portrait of Winifred Edgerton Merrill was presented to Columbia and now hangs in one of the academic buildings with the inscription, "She opened the door." Merrill was also a member of a committee that petitioned Columbia University for the founding of Barnard
College
in 1889, New York's first secular institution to award women the liberal arts
degree.
Website:
http://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/merrill.htm
Thanks
to Kimberly Groshong for permission to reproduce her beautiful solution!