thnik again!

If a golf ball was a sphere with radius 4.3cm and it had 350 half-spheres indented in it with radius 0.2cm what would be its surface area?

Suppose that you want to teach the ‘cat’ concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I’ll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying ‘kitty’ each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience. - R P Boas

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use theGoogle-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience. – WIRED

What is Romanian for “good morning”?

There are two versions of math in the lives of many Americans: the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging. Our task is to introduce this second version to today’s students, get them excited about math, and prepare them for the future. – Jo Boaler

#5

This site is not about making mathematics easy because it isn’t. It is about making it make sense because it does. – Mathematics for Teaching

It is carnival time!

This blog will continue Monday 27 February.

That someone not from the Soviet Union could be the number one chess player was hard to believe a few years back. Now the world champion is from India and the one with the best ranking is from Norway. And, by the way, the Soviet Union no longer exists.

I am from Norway and I suggest that the name of the country should be changed. It should start with a C.

Be amazed!

Be bemused and amused!

- I had a bad dream last night.
- You had? Me too!
- I was sitting on the floor inside a big square painted on the floor.
- I was dividing by zero.
- I was 3m from one corner, 4m from another, and 5m from a third.
- And I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Mathematics.
- But that prize does not exist!
- Does your square exist?
- I am trying to find out its size.
- One million Swedish kronor.

Problem inspired by dan’s problems.