Xavier, Yves and Zoé play Ping Pong a whole afternoon. 1 against 1, the third sitting and replacing the looser. Xavier played 10 times. Yves 15 times. Zoé 17 times.

Who lost the second match?

Kindly submitted by Paul Schwander.

Anyway, this blog will open its doors when we are well established in a country who is 543 years behind Thailand.

Denmark barely made it to the second stage, the elimination tournament, but beat Argentina 3-2 to become the Champion!

England  beat Portugal 4-2 to capture bronze (it was 2-2 after 90 minutes).

Here is the function that determined how many goals a team scored in a game.

Function goals()

Select Case Rnd()

Case Is < 0.3

goals = 0

Case Is < 0.5

goals = 1

Case Is < 0.8

goals = 2

Case Is < 0.9

goals = 3

Case Else

goals = 4

End Select

End Function

The first three rounds are done.  Slovenia was the only team who managed three wins. Switzerland beat USA and eliminated them from the tournament.

I have changed the initial rules a bit. A fourth round will not be played. The best 16 teams will now play an elimination tournament. In the eighth finals team 1 meets team 16, Slovenia vs England, teams 2 vs team 15, and so on.

My two-year contract in Thailand is up. The next two months will be filled with travelling and searching for a new location from September. Ah, I almost forgot, with fishing as well.

This blog will resume September 1. Take care till then!

By the way, if you need advanced daily problems try this site in the meantime. One example:

It is nice to see how the number of free online mathematical journals is increasing. The latest one out is JUM, Journal of Unpublishable Mathematics. Volume 1 can be found for download on this page.

I’ve always been amazed at the power and the effectiveness of the simulation technique, and whenever possible I’ve used simulations in mathematics. Since I’ve always loved sport as well, I decided a few years back to see how I could put them together to produce a maths-based World Cup simulation for teachers and pupils to use. The simulation proved very popular in primary and secondary schools, and this article is a revised version of what I wrote then. - Alan Parr

Here is Parr’s article on how you can simulate the World Cup with your students or friends.

Round 2 ended with four teams with full score and Japan at the top. Two rounds remain before the elimination part.  Round 3 will be played in a few days.

- You look bored!
- Yeah. I don’t know what to do. Nothing inspires me.
- You are as sent from heaven!
- Yeah?
- Make a circle and colour every point on its circumference red or blue.
- Won’t that take a long time?
- And? You said you had nothing to do.
- OK. But what’s the point?
- Pun intended?
- What pun?
- The old lady in the bakery asserts that regardless of how you colour the points one can always find an isosceles triangle with equally coloured vertices on the circle.
- I didn’t know you shopped at the bakery.

Problem source: Mathematical problems by Andrew Adler.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. - Daniel Patrick Moynihan