A new feature born of boredom of confinement during a blizzard...

My Week in Geek

It was a good week for the geek in me last week. There was plenty to watch and catch up on, and most of what I saw did not disappoint.

The week started off in retro fashion when I discovered that one of the episodes of Doctor Who on my DVR was actually a Tom Baker serial, The Seeds of Doom. The DVR recorded it a few months ago when BBC America ran a few "Breakfast with Baker" specials on Sunday mornings. I hadn't realized that it was there.

Excellent series, and I recommend tracking it down. It starts off as if it might be a riff on the original The Thing when alien plant life is discovered in the Antarctic. (Yes, that's the other end of the Earth from the movie, but a pole's a pole!) However, the action moves back to England, and it gets to be more Day of the Triffids, but it's the human villain that's creepy as hell as he sides with the plants to take over the world and eradicate the Animal kingdom, of which is no longer seems to relate to.

Also peculiar in this serial is that the TARDIS is absent until the very end, after the story has concluded.

Next up was Face-Off, the Syfy reality series, a competition where effects designers compete to make unusual make-ups for actors in a short turnaround, usually three days. A lot is asked of them, and most times, most of them deliver. Apparently, these challenges aren't too far from what actual effects experts (including the judges) can be called on to do by a director with a very quick deadline. I generally sum this show up as saying that it's Project Runway, with science fiction makeup and costumes. Because it is. It's the same format, except I can actually sit through this, without being forced to. It's my favorite show on TV because I'm amazed at what these competitors bring to the final reveal stage.

The amusing thing this week is that I recalled that after the first episode, I tweeted, "no one whose face I want to slap" because sometimes there's that contestant that just grates you (or the producers go out of their way to frame someone that way), but not so far. This week, in social media, I discovered that the Germans have a word, backpfeifengesicht, which means "a face that’s begging to be slapped." I needed to learn its pronunciation.

Add to this that my favorite person on the show, so far, is the German guy, not because of his talent (so far) but because I love listening to him speak. Partly, this is because he reminds me of some old sitcom characters. I'm thinking more Get Smart than Hogan's Heroes, and not Siegfried, either.

Moving on ...

Agent Carter had a two-hour premiere, which was more like two one-hour episodes, but that didn't matter much. They move Peggy Carter to the West Coast for a special assignment, and she's right back in the thick of things with Jarvis. The season will undoubtedly deal with "zero matter" which behaves in a funny way, like the obelisk in Agents of SHIELD. Also back is Peggy's old nemesis, the Russian spy who grew up as part of the Black Widow program. Things should get good.

Arrow and Flash had good episodes, moving their plotlines along, setting up the emergence of new characters. I don't want to spoil anything that might be coming but Felicity in a wheelchair seems as obvious as the introduction of Wally West. (Likewise, someone gave me some speculation on Diggle, but it referred to a character from a time when I wasn't really paying much attention to comics.) Not that any of this is a bad thing.

Which brings me to the biggie: DC's Legends of Tomorrow, which looks to be a new anthology series of sorts. A group of "B-characters" from Arrow and Flash are given new life on this show. I will not join in on suggestions that each of them could hold a series on their own (mostly because I don't believe that) but they should be able to make a heck of a team. The set-up also provides the producers with a way to replace unpopular characters or actors who wish to leave.

Central to the plot is the one new character: Time-traveling Rip Hunter, played by Arthur Darvill who has some experience in the matter from his seasons of Doctor Who. I won't say he was wasted as Rory, but one episode of Legends tells me he was underused. (Plus, I saw him on Broadway "once".)

Of the other characters, the new Firestorm will take some getting used to. I read the comic from its beginning until around the time DC decided that the "Nuclear Man" should really be a Fire Elemental. They seem to have ditched that idea. He appeared in one episode of the cartoon Brave and the Bold, an incarnation I didn't like. However, Prof. Stein has had plenty of screen time on Flash and is a good character, and the actor plays the part well. Jax needs to hold up his end.

As for the villains who may be heroes, they should fit in because they are a little too four-color even for Flash, but in this show, over-the-top should work fine. Heatwave needs to develop a little more personality, like Cold has.

Rounding out the week with more reruns...

Friday brought another airing of Galaxy Quest, which I have dubbed the Third Greatest Star Trek Movie Ever. Seeing Alan Rickman one more time brought smiles and laughs, which is better at the time than seeing Die Hard would've been.

And finally, I've been recording episodes of Quantum Leap from an oldies network on cable. I loved the show, but missed many of the episodes because it moved around the schedule a lot back then. Who remembers what it might've been opposite. One of the first episodes I taped was the "Man of La Mancha" episode, where Sam leaps into an understudy for the musical, playing in Syracuse, and he sees the understudy for Dulcinea -- his former piano teacher that was his first crush/love, and who was formerly linked up with the person Sam is inhabiting. There are a few reasons why this is a favorite of mine, but watching it mine added another: the Guest Stars. They could get actual Broadway people for this episode. John Cullum appeared in 1776 a few years before this and played the actor playing Don Quixote. Also appearing, but not singing, was Ernie Sabella also of Broadway, TV and The Lion King. There had a lot of great characters back then who appeared on a lot of shows like this one. There are still a lot of good actors today, but there are so many channels of TV that the talent pool is stretched way too thin.

So that was the week, and it was a good one. I'm hoping that weeks to come don't disappoint, but it will be hard to live up to this one.

Reviews of the Last 3.14 Book I Read

The title is a little misleading as there's no way that I made it anywhere near a seventh of the way through one of the books. However, in keeping up with a goal to read more and to write more, I've uploaded four reviews to my reading blog, which started out as simply someplace for me to keep track of what I've read and of the plots and characters of the more obscure ones.

Of the four books, all four were e-books, and only one of them I've ever actually seen in print. Two were fantasy, one sci-fi (time travel), and the last falls into the self-help category.

The direct links are:

Shards of the Glass Slipper: Queen Cinder by Roy A. Mauritsen, 2012.

Dirty Machines by David Matthew Olson, 2014.

365 Things I Learned the Hard Way (So You Don't Have To) by The Digital Writer (Jonathan Wondrusch), 2012.

The God in the Clear Rock by Lucian Randolph, 2011.

So check 'em out. (Well, maybe not that last one.)

First Shoutout of the Year

I have to give a shoutout to "Life, the Universe and One Brow". According to the statistics I've been able to gather, after social media sites and search engines, One Brow was the first blog to send me traffic, and the only one to crack the top ten. It's strange to see the blogging landscape change as more people find me through news feeds (and other RSS feeds) than through other blogs they read, but social media has risen. The people have spoken with their clicks (not even mouse-clicks) that they like a centralized repository for their links.

"Mr. Brow" is a part-time teacher and full-time software engineer, and his musings can be found at http://lifetheuniverseandonebrow.blogspot.com/ .

As for my other stats for 2014, they were actually quite boring.

If you exclude links to the main page of the blog, which were considerable, and just look at the individual pages people landed on, my comics took a bit of a hit. I'm hoping that's because people just come to the page and see them without clicking on an individual page, but I really don't know.

Of the top 20 pages, only three were comics, and only one of those from 2014. (Coffee Logic" still gets top honors because of the link from Spiked Math, which have a big cult following. I'm forever grateful that Mike always gives a tip of the hat to my site when there something here that's similar to something he's done.

I shouldn't surprise anyone that the links with the most hits were all related to the New York Regents exams. Those pages get hits in the run-up to exams as students look for explanations to old problems as well as in the days immediately following each exam as I review the new tests.

Biggest shocker was the Top 20 placement of this column: Hey, Internet: Where's My Picture of Me and Ann B. Davis?

I think that speaks for itself and the Internet pretty well.

Book Review: Realm of Measure, Isaac Asimov (1960)

Removed from circulation from my school library and regulated to the trash pile before I spotted the circa-1960 photo of Isaac Asimov on the back cover (looking younger than I've ever seen him before, so I surprised myself by recognizing him), serendipity brought Realm of Measure: From the yardstick to the Theory of Relativity into my possession.

I'm happy that it did. Though billed as an exploration of mathematics, he veers off a bit into scientific measurements, but I'll still count this toward my goal of reading one interesting book on math each summer, and this one does it without spinning out of control with endless, overly-complicated and overly-ridiculous equations.

Asimov goes into the history of measurements and how certain units came about and how the different units relate to one another. Not only did lengths like palms and feet have to be standardized from person to person and town to town, but also in relation to each so that they could be divided more evenly among people without formal education but who could count and compute the basic operations.

Asimov pushes for the metric system often throughout the book, as it's used a lot in science (where he was quite at home), not to mention in most of the non-English-speaking world. (He doesn't actually mention the measure of the English-speaking world using British units.)

The biggest problem with his arguments is that he presented the beauty of American/British system in its origins. If you were a wordsmith, you might be interested in the etymology of words, where they came from and how they came to be. You wouldn't stand for simplified spellings that are attempted from time to time. (Benjamin Franklin had a serious plan to change the language and simplify spelling, for instance.) When you read the origin of who's foot we use and who's armlength, and why a furlong is 1/8 of a mile, there is a wonder to it that goes beyond, "You see, there's this stick, and it has these two marks in it...."

Further, the system of divisions make sense. Think of the times. Think of the people and how they lived. If they split things, they likely halved them. If they had to quarter something, they halved it again. How often did someone come along with nine of his friends and need things sorted out evenly among them. And for all those divisions, 10 isn't a great number to work with: you can only divide it by 2 and 5, but not 3 nor 4. Dividing 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6 proved more convenient, if it you lose 5. Moreover, metric conversion is easy in that you can switch units simply by moving the decimal point, but first you had to invent the decimal point! And that didn't happen to, what, the sixteenth century?

Oddly enough, I can sit here and argue that the time for the metric system has passed. We're living in a computer age, ruled by binary and hexidecimal. The number 10 really doesn't fit well into that scheme. And once you get passed 11th year math, base 10 goes out the window in favor of natural logs and e.

Not that any of this took away from my enjoyment of his book, which I heartily recommend to all with the proviso, "Don't try to read it in bed when you're really tired."

And I'll close by considering how close NYC came to allowing 16-ounce soft drinks while banning 500 milliliters. Metric: not even once.

Comic Sites You'll Love -- Hey, I'm Listed.

I don't remember if I posted a link to this before, but I didn't see one in a quick search.

Guillermo Bautista has an entry in Math and Multimedia, entitled 7 Funny Math Comic Sites You Will Love.

(x, why?) made the list. Well, actually, this blog made the list, but I like to give a plug to the comics-only site every now and then. These days the blog is starting to get more traffic, but without the other site, some of the comics wouldn't be readable.

What else is on the list? Well, there's . . . ah, that would spoil it. Go check it out.

End-of-Year Review

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)
(C)Copyright 2014, C. Burke.

Because, let's face it, I'm just a flippin' genius!

January 2014 Geometry Regents Discussion Thread, Part 3: Multiple Choice

Previous threads: Part 1, Part 2.

I'm not going to type up all the questions, but I'll identify the topic addressed in the problems.

1. You are given a midpoint and an endpoint of a line segment and have to find the other endpoint. You don't really need to use the midpoint formula and solve algebraically. Just notice that from A to M the x-co-ordinate drops 2. Drop it two more and B has an x-co-ordinate of 2. There's only one choice that works, so it's the answer, and you don't have to find y, unless you want to check.

2. Which construction is used to make a 45^o angle? Only two choices have 45^o angles in them (or something that looks like one). Choice (3) shows a straight angle bisected and then the right angle bisected.

3. First mention of the equation of a circle: (x - h)² + (y - k)² = r²
If there's a "+" in the equation before h or k, it means that the co-ordinate is negative. Take the square root of the number after the equal sign.

4. If two planes are perpendicular to the same line then they are parallel to each other.

5. A triangle is transformed and the image is congruent to the original. This is true from reflections, translation and rotations but not dilations, which will expand or shrink the size of the triangle.

6. For two edges of a cube not to be coplanar, they have to point in different directions; i.e., skew lines. Remember: two edges don't have to be on the same surface of the prism for them to be coplanar.

7. The points that are 3 units away from the origin and equidistant from the x-axis and y-axis would be on the lines y = x and y = -x where they intersect the circle centered on the origin with a radius of three. Therefore, there are four points which fit both conditions.

8. The medians of a triangle meet at the centroid. The longer portion, from the vertex to the centroid, is twice the length of the other portion, from the centroid to the opposite side of the triangle. That makes the shorter piece one-third the length of the median, and the longer piece two-thirds. If the median is 12, the segments are 8 and 4.

9. Solve y = x and y = x² - 2.
You could do substitution and factoring. Or you could just try (1, 1) and (2, 2). (1, 1) doesn't work. (2, 2) does. That leaves choice (2) (2,2) and (-1, -1). A quick double-check on (-1, -1) shows that it's the answer.

10. Parallel lines have the same slope, so first you need to know the slope of 5x + y = 6. Subtract 5x from both sides to get slope-intercept form and we see that the slope is -5. That eliminates two of the choices. Because it have to go through (5, 3), plug is 5 for x in each and see which equation gives you 3 for y.

11. It's a demonstration of the Addition Property of Equality. If you add two pairs of congruent segments, the larger segments will be congruent as well.

12. You can't use SSA to prove congruency, except in the special case of Hypotenuse-Leg.

13. The midsegments are half the length of the side they don't touch. The midsegments bisect the sides of the triangle. So there are a whole bunch of congruent segments in that diagram. The perimeter of the trapezoid is 6 + 8 + 5 + 8 + 8 = 35.

14. The exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the sum of the two remote angles. ACR = 125 - 60 = 65.

15. Again! The equation of a circle. The center is (0, -2), so h = 0, and gets omitted, and k = -2, which becomes +2 in the formula. Radius = 5, so 5² = 25.

16. The largest angle of a triangle is across from the longest side. In ABC, if angle B is the largest, AC is the longest side. Choice 1.

17. The more sides that a regular polygon has, the smaller the exterior angles will be because the sum of the exterior angles is always 360.
The fewest sides a polygon can have is 3, a triangle. Divide 360 by 3 and you get 120, which is the largest for regular polygons.
Note: 360 is an impossible answer. You should have crossed it out immediately.

18. They are looking for the lateral area of the cylinder. If it were a soup can, you'd want the area of the label, but not the top and bottom of the can.
The formula is 2*pi*r*h, which is 2*(3.141592...)*9*42, which is 2375.
I don't know why they included 2374 as an answer. If you used 3.1416 for pi, you get 2375.05. If you only used 3.14, you get a smaller answer, which isn't a choice.

19. The shape is a quadrilateral, which has 360 degrees. The angles formed by tangents and radii are right angles (90 degrees each) and you are given 38. Add 90 + 90 + 38 to get 218. Subtract 360-218 to get 142.

20. It a square has a diagonal of 3*(2)^.5, then each side of the square is 3. The perimeter is 12.

21. If you Rotate 90 degrees about the origin and they don't give you a direction then the direction is counter-clockwise!. You move from Quadrant I to Quadrant II, where x is negative and y is positive. The correct answer is (-1, 7).

22. Angles 1 and 2 are supplementary. (They are NOT congruent.) Solve 7x - 36 + 5x + 12 = 180.

12x - 24 = 180, so 12x = 204 and x = 17.

23. THIRD TIME!
At least this one changes it up a little by making you find the radius, which is 2, so r² = 4.

24. When a diameter bisects a chord, it is a perpendicular bisector. That means a right angle. That means you can draw an extra radius and make a right triangle and then use the Pythagorean Theorem to find whatever side isn't given.
FE = 17 - 2 = 15. Draw FC, FC = 17. To be "Pythy", CE = 8.

25. Rhombuses (rhombii?) do not have congruent diagonals, unless they are squares. Their diagonals bisect each other.

26. FOURTH TIME!
The center of the circle is (-6, 7), which is in Quadrant II. The radius is 8. That means the circle reaches across the y-axis into Quadrant I and down far enough to cross the x-axis into Quadrant III. Process of elimination, it doesn't go into IV. If you don't believe me, figure that IV is across the origin, and that the origin is (36 + 49)^(.5) = 9.22 away from the center. That's more than 8.

27. No invariant points. That means ALL the points will vary, which means they'll all move.
In other words, no image will have the same co-ordinates (be in the same spot) as the origin.
The three linear reflections all leave a point in the same spot. The point reflection (about the origin) does not.

28. There are four lines which are tangent to both circles at the same time. One touching the "tops", one on the "bottoms" and two more forming an "X" in the middle.

So how did you do?
And what did I get wrong.
Ha! Trick question! I didn't get anything wrong! I just might have made a few inadvertent typos. Yeah! That's the ticket!

January 2014 Algebra Regents Discussion Pre-Thread

This is the "pre-thread" discussion of the January 2014 New York State Regents exam.

What does that mean?

It means that I spent the day off-site grading Geometry papers, so I didn't see a copy of the exam. I have no idea what was on it (yet!). HOWEVER, if you took the exam and you would like to discuss any particular question, if you can give me the information that was on the test, I'll try to help the best that I can.

Ready? Go.

January 2014 Geometry Regents Discussion Thread, Part 2: The Open-Ended Questions

Link back to Part 1: Intro

It was easier to start a second thread than to edit the previous one. Actually, it wasn't -- I just decided to do this.

Unless you scored better than 75% of the multiple-choice questions correct, you need some points from the open-ended sections -- Parts II, III and IV -- to put you over the top. (If you did manage 22 multiple-choice questions correct, hey, congrats! Good for you!) I'm starting here because I'll be grading oodles of these tomorrow morning.

29. The diameter of a sphere is 5 inches. Determine and state the surface area of the sphere to the nearest hundredth of a square inch.

This is extremely easy, considering that they give you the formula on the reference table! Remember to use 2.5 as the radius, not 5. Use your calculator for pi. DO NOT use 3.14. It won't give you enough accuracy.

SA = (4)(3.141592)(2.5)^2 = 78.5398... = 78.54 sq in.

30. Using a compass and straightedge, construct the perpendicular bisector of AB.

Hint: Look at question 2. Any of those look familiar? Maybe see a good starting point?
Sorry, I'm not making the diagrams.

31. The endpoints of AB are A(3, -4) and B(7, 2). Determine and state the length of AB in simplest radical form.

Digression: (Or should I say "Tangent"?)
Everyone in my class got a question just like this one correct in practice! And everyone showed All The Steps!
And I'm sure that you didn't all copy from each other, with the first person copying the answer from the Internet!
Ri-i-i-i-i-ight?

(I'll use the abbreviation "sqrt" for the square root function.) The square root of 4-squared plus 6-squared = sqrt(16+36) = sqrt(52) = sqrt(4*13) = 2*sqrt(13)

32. A right prism has a square base with an area of 12 square meters. the volume of the prism is 84 cubic meters. Determine and state the height of the prism, in meters.

Did you look up the formula in the back of the book? Why? Okay, if you did, did you find it? If you said, "Yes", you probably got this WRONG. It's a basic formula, so it won't be there.

The volume of a prism (84 m³) is the Area of the Base (12m²) times the height. Divide 84/12 and get 7 meters.

34. Without repeating the equations, you can see by looking at them (no manipulation required) that one has a slope of positive one-half and the other has a slope of negative one-half. They are NOT inverse reciprocals -- i.e., the slopes don't have a product of -1 -- and they (obviously) are not the same, so, therefore, they are neither parallel nor perpendicular.

"YES!", you have to give an explanation. Your answer must be backed up with a reason or definition and that reason has to have some kind of work or evidence that your reason is true. Even for something this obvious.

I will be shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find that "neither" with nothing supporting it would be worth a point. Don't count on it.

34. Another locus question. (There was one in the multiple-choice questions.) Two meters from the row of corn is two vertical lines, one on either side of line c. Five meters from the scarecrow is a circle with a radius of 5, centered on point T. Important: Six point T is 6 meters from line c, then T is only 4 meters from the locus line on the left side of c. The circle will intersect that line in two places, but it will NOT cross c. (And the other vertical line is right out.) There should be two X's on the paper.

Part III: Four credit questions

35. I can't copy the picture. (It isn't online yet.) So let me describe it.
Triangle ABC is isosceles with AB = BC. CA is extended through A to point D, and DB is drawn.
The measure of: <D = x, <DAB = 5x - 30, <DBA = 3x - 60, AB = 6y - 8, BC = 4y - 2.
Only algebraic answers will receive full credit.

Find m<D: Find x where x + 5x - 30 + 3x - 60 = 180
9x - 90 = 180,
9x = 30
x = 30, m<D = 30 degrees.

Find m<BAC, which is supplementary to <DAB, which is 5(30) - 30 = 120 degrees.
So BAC = 180 - 120 = 60 degrees.

Find the length of BC: Solve 6y - 8 = 4y - 2
2y = 6
y = 3, so BC = 4(3) - 2 = 12 - 2 = 10

Find the length of DC: SAY WHAT? How are we supposed to figure that out? Is A the midpoint of DC? Do we know AC? Can we get AC?
No to all of that.
Use what you already know -- and if you made a mistake, GUESS.
I say that only because this problem makes sense only if BAD is a right triangle. Two of the angles are 30 and 60, so angle DBC is 90 degrees.
You can't use Pythagorean Theorem because we don't know the length of BD and can't figure it out. BUT... we do know that in a 30-60-90 right triangle, the hypotenuse is twice the size of the shorter leg, and BC is the shorter leg. And BC, we just found, has a length of 10. Therefore, DC is 20.

EDIT: On further review, the smaller triangle is equilateral and the triangle on the left is isosceles, so you can show that those four smaller line segments all have a length of 10, therefore DC is 20. I would still require some work to get this, but I've been informed that no work is necessary because you "can assume" that they did the work because how else would they know. Okay, it wasn't quite stated in that fashion, but it might as well have been.

36. When doing a Composition of Transformations (two transformations) you have to go RIGHT TO LEFT. If you do it the other way, that is a Conceptual Error and you will lose 2 points right off the top. You have to find the Translation OF THE Reflection, so the reflection gets done first.

Flip the triangle over the y-axis: the x-co-ordinates change signs, but the y-co-ordinates will remain the same.
Next Translate x co-ordinates +4 (to the right) and y-co-ordinates -5 (down) to get your final answer.

37. Right Triangle Altitude Theorem. AD/DC=DC/DB, and DC is 6. Additionally, AD:AB = 1:5.

Let AD be x. That makes AB = 5x, so DB = 4x.
So x/6 = 6/4x.
Cross-multiply: 4x² = 36, x² = 9, so x = 3.
AD = 3, DB = 4x = 4(3) = 12.
(Algebraic solution.)

37. A very strange proof. They gave you the Statements. You needed to supply (some of) the Reasons. You have to prove a Tangent-Secant rule: (RS)² = RA * RT.

Basically, St is perpendicular to RS because tangent lines are perpendicular to the radius (and therefore the diameter) and the point of tangency. Angle RAS is a right angle because it is an inscribed angle for a semicircle, so it is half of 180 degrees, which is 90 degrees. RST is congruent to RAS because all right angles are congruent. Triangles RAS and RST are similar because of the AA Theorem. Because they are similar, their corresponding sides are proportional. Since they are proportional, the product of the means is equal to the product of the extremes, which gives us the equation which we were looking for.

Questions? Comments? Corrections? (Surely, I'll get those! And I'll call you "Surely" if I feel like it!) Debate?

Multiple-choice as I get to them in the next thread.

January 2014 Geometry Regents Discussion Thread, Part 1

Note: At the moment, this is most a placeholder for a later discussion.

The New York State Geometry Regents exam has ended in most of the state, excepting unusual situations, such as late rooms, time extensions and conflict rooms. Because of these special circumstances, I'll refrain from talking specifics for a couple more hours. At some point later this afternoon, I'll edit this thread and start posting information about the exam itself.

Don't let that get in the way of leaving any comments or impressions you have about the exam.

Overall, it was a "doable" test. (I hate that word. But "test" isn't a much better word.) There were three questions about the equation of a circle, like there always seems to be.

The final proof was a little ridiculous in the way it was presented. The statements were given, you just had to come up with the reasons. I have to admit, that I had to go back to the book to find the "proper" wording for the very last statement because I kept looking at it from an Algebra lens not a Geometry lens. I knew what it was supposed to say, but I just wasn't 100% sure on how to say it. But, that's me. Hopefully, that wasn't you. The one good thing about the fill in the blank approach is that students who would otherwise max out at 1 or 2 points had a shot at half-credit or more.

And, yes, I still look through the prism of getting more students to 65 than I do getting them "the best score possible" because the latter students don't need my help as much and the outcome generally isn't as critical. The "best bang for the buck" is getting as many kids to pass as possible.

So before I sign off: does anyone have any comments or questions to focus on? Should I start with open-ended or multiple-choice? Your call.

End of Year Review 2

(Click on the cartoon to see the full image.)
(C)Copyright 2013, C. Burke.

Though my professional life is in reruns, the comic isn't. So let's shake it up with a fill-in-the-blank. The punchline will be left as an exercise to the reader. Remember to answer in a complete sentence and to show your work!

Because people get their feed from multiple sites, get notifications from several more and have at least four places to respond (five, if you count email), I'll collect the best ones and publish them all in one spot.

It shouldn't be too difficult if I don't get too many responses. But feel free to make my life difficult!

By the way, this isn't my first "excess letter". Check out last year's Kiss Today Good-bye. Okay, now point me toward tomorrow.

Book Review: The Pleasures of Pi,e and Other Interesting Numbers (Y E O Adrian)

Every now and then, I like to pick up a book about math (rather than a generic "math book"). I'm not sure what I'm looking for, and what I might find that I haven't seen before. One thing I know: I usually get lost or bogged down halfway through when I get to long series of equations that I possibly could get through if I bothered. The problem is that after a while I don't want to bother.

Readability is the first factor in favor of The Pleasures of Pi,e and Other Interesting Numbers (2006) (Note: I'm not sure if there is supposed to be a space between the comma and the "e" or not. There is a picture of a pie on the cover, so I suspect no space.)

Y E O Adrian, M.A., Ph.D. (Cambridge University), keeps the tone of the book light and interesting for the first 140 pages or so. In each chapter, the reader will be shown a series on the left-hand page, and a passage with some explanation, interesting fact or even encouragement for the reader to figure something out on the right-hand page. The first few series tend to infinity (with an explanation of what that means), but soon the sums start to converge on 1 or 2 or some multiple or fraction of e or pi.

Are there proofs of these sums? Sure. They're just let for later. The back 100 pages lists the proofs from easy to advanced, relying on things previously established, and explaining in a way that's easy to comprehend. I think high school students (ones who have had trigonometry) will be able to follow along.

It was a nice little diversion from my usual summer fare. I enjoyed reading it, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a "fun" math book to read. Yes, some of those actually exist. It's not a null set.

One final note -- and this was almost the lead, but I held off out of respect -- if you were to remove the interesting number, e, from the author's name, what would you have left?

YO Adrian!

A Rocky finish to my review, to be sure.

EDIT (7/28): Forgot to mention: library book, softcover. Sometimes when looking over the books I've read, I like to keep track of the ones that I bought (new or used) or borrowed (from friends or libraries) and for that matter, if they're even printed on paper anymore! Five of the last six books I read were e-books, but I've still read fewer that a dozen of those.

Hitting the Pools?

I don't accept advertising here, and I generally delete posts which are here solely for the purpose of hawking their stuff without contributing in any way to the discussions over here. On the other hand, I've been known to rant on occasion (and more often than that if you've ever met me in person!), so I thought I'd say something nice for a change, free of charge.

If you're looking for pool supplies in Brooklyn, head on over to Best Quality Pools on McDonald Ave, in the Gravesend section. Not only do they have what you need, but they're friendly about it. And unlike some other place in Brooklyn -- which I won't name because I don't want more mail from their legal representatives in New Jersey -- the folks at Best Quality Pools won't refer you to their legal representatives in New Jersey if you say something they don't like.

But, hey, what's not to like?

Review: Zombie Dice (Steve Jackson Games)

Zombie Dice is a fun, quick game of odds and probabilities and generally pushing your luck from Steve Jackson Games. It's a somewhat reminiscent of FOR*GET*IT, but with streamlined rules and a better scoring system that avoids one of that game's biggest flaws. (*)

Each player is a zombie searching for brains while trying to avoid shotgun blasts as represented on the sides of the nicely crafted green, yellow and red dice. The colors are important because your probability of success is higher with green than with red, but the dice you roll are chosen randomly, so look out. (Note: if playing a zombie bothers you for some reason, you could easily flip this game around and be humans looking to shotgun the zombies before your brains are eaten, but that would be more challenging with these dice. The zombies numbers are overwhelming.)

The rules literally take seconds to learn, and their simplicity might fool you into believing that the game is too simple. Start believing that and you'll pay everything (to paraphrase the song) when you roll the dice just one more time. You risk all the points for the round on every roll, and you can only dodge the shotguns for so long. Under the best circumstances, there's better than a 40% chance of seeing the business end of those barrels.

There were a few drawbacks discovered from our first sessions. First, going last is a major advantage, so we have a House Rule that the first player from the previous round goes last in the following round so that this position rotates.

Second, there's no interaction between the players other than goading them into taking another dangerous roll or convincing them to play it safe. Psychological manipulation aside, maybe an expansion could address this with some kind of challenge dice or interference cards or some other twist.

Third, after a few games, the nifty Zombie Dice cup start to show signs of wear around the rim, caused by players shoving their fingers down into the narrow can to draw their dice randomly. (It's called "gravity", people. Tip the cup upwards and the dice will come to you!) Quick Fix for next time: put the dice in a spare dice bag and use the cup to roll only the three you select.

Summary: Great, quick game. Perfect between longer games, for the one-last-game-before-we-go game, or a we're-still-waiting-for-you-know-you game. (And then tell them about all the fun they missed for coming late.) And if you like zombie games, you probably have bags of little plastic zombies. use them to keep score.

(*) In FOR*GET*IT, if, for example, all the "IT" dice are out of play, you're free to continue rolling until you max out of points without any chance of losing. There's always the possibility of Bad Stuff on every die in Zombie Dice

Review

The following was a review of (x, why?) that appeared in on a blog that no longer exists. It was found in the cache when Googling.

Friday, February 22, 2008 (x, why?) (x, why?) by Chris Burke (x, why?) is an MS Paint comic about math, as drawn by high school math teacher Chris Burke. The fact that it's clearly intended for his students makes me want to excuse how dull, corny and poorly drawn it is. Teachers make these sort of things all the time- but they generally don't put them on ComicGenesis. It seems like a poor decision on his part since he already had the comic on a blog, which is a more reliable host than CG- though having a CG account makes a comic more likely to get hits, those people aren't really his target audience. Maybe this decision was inspired by the success of xkcd. The jokes are mildly funny if you're into math. This one in particular got a little smile out of me. The author recognizes that his comic isn't very good and just draws it to amuse himself and his students. It just seems so innocent I can't snark on it. Few webcomics are. So comic on, Mr. Burke.