Loving your enemies
Over the past 4 years of living in my apartment high above the city, I have had to share my balcony with a number of freeloading pigeons. That may not be so bad, except they poop profusely, and leave me Continue Reading
Author: Pi
I am Paul King, a math and science teacher. I help maintain the MIT FAQ Archive along with Nick Bolach. I am also the maintainer of a FAQ the archive.Paraskevidekatriaphobia
Paraskevidekatriaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th is where people avoid travelling, marrying, or even working that day. As for the latter, you have to be pretty irrational to not see that not showing up for work for suspersitious reasons Continue Reading
Statistical factoids which are actually true
I have often discussed with my students about the hilarity that ensues when one conflates correlation with causation. The lesson, of course, is that they should never be confused, otherwise you can conclude things like “World hunger is caused by Continue Reading
The greatest advance in computer technology
My three HP laptops I have serve as latter-day museum pieces of how technology has progressed. I am not trying to slag Hewlett-Packard. I like their printers, and despite their reputation, I also like their laptops. Today, I am mentioning Continue Reading
A short problem
This math problem had me going for a bit. Looked at from a distance, it looked like one thing; and when I had the occasion to sit down and hash it out, it was quite another. A student submitted a Continue Reading
What is “universal” about USB?
I am one of those hopeless romantics who believe that words must mean something. “Universal” is quite a stong word when used, and its all-encompassing reach implies that it is good for … well, everything. As in the whole universe Continue Reading
Technology in Mathematics: Chalk
First off, May the Fourth be with you! (Had to get that in there…) Chalk still stands out as the technology of choice of mathematicians everywhere. Those of us forced to use whiteboards realize the wisdom of the ancients once Continue Reading
The infinite sum which equals -1/12
On 16 January, 1913, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a clerk living in Madras, India, sent a letter to Oxford professor Godfrey Harold Hardy, which contained many of his intuitive mathematical musings, one of which led to the conclusion: In normal mathematics, this Continue Reading
Update on Tex editors
Nearly three years ago, I wrote about a comparison of LaTeX editors. Soon after, I began to use a third editor which, if you are a latex expert, you almost certaintly would have heard about, and are probably in fact Continue Reading
A brief note on Pythagorean Triples
And I decided today to share what I learned about an algorithm for generating Pythagorean triples for any and , where Z. A Pythagorean triple are any three whole numbers which satisfy the equation . Let ; , and you Continue Reading