2015 - Page 7 of 22 - Math and Multimedia

Prepare for Math Contests with MATHCOUNTS Trainer App

September 10, 2015 GB Teaching Tools, Web 2.0 Technology

For math contest enthusiasts, if you are preparing for MATHCOUNTS or other middle school and high school math contests, then the MATHCOUNTS Trainer App is a good app that you can try. The app contains thousand of problems from previous School, Chapters, and National Mathcounts. Note that all problems in this app have full solutions. For those who are not familiar with MATHCOUNTS, it is a nationwide mathematics competitions for middle school students in the United States.

MATHCOUNTS Trainer App

In using this app, you can track your progress, compete with other players, and climb the Leaderboard.

The MATHCOUNTS Trainer app is FREE and available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. It also works offline.

How to Guess the Day of the Week Your Friend Was Born

September 6, 2015 GB Beauty of Math, Math Lite

If you have some friends born between 1900 and 2000, then maybe you can impress them with this trick: find the day of the week that they were born.

Here are the steps:

(1) Let $y$ be the year of their birth. Evaluate $\frac{y - 1}{4}$ and ignore the remainder. For example, we want to know the date March 3, 1947, then we have

$\displaystyle \frac{1947 - 1}{4} = \frac{1946}{4} = 486$ .

(2) Find what day of the year is the date and let’s represent it D. There are 31 days in January, 28 days in February, and March 3 is the third day.

$D = 31 + 28 + 3 = 62$

(3) Let $s = y$ + the result in (1) + $D$ .

$s = 1947 + 486 + 62 = 2495$

4.) Divide $s$ by $7$ and get the remainder.

$\frac{2495}{7} = 356$ remainder $3$ .

Now, you can guess the day of the week using the remainder.

Remainder: Day

0: Friday
1: Saturday
2: Sunday
3: Monday
4: Tuesday
5: Wednesday
6: Thursday

Hence, March 3, 1947 is a Monday.

Source: Nature of Mathematics

Leave a comment algorithm to find the day of the week, day of the week, finding the day of the week for any date

The Loop Game: Pool in Elliptical Table

August 28, 2015 GB Games and Puzzles, High School Mathematics

Mathematics enthusiast and author Allex Bellos has created an elliptical pool table and he named it “The Loop Game.” It was supposed to always make the ball go to the table pocket. This can be done by placing the pocket at one of the foci and hitting the ball placed on the other focus. This is easy to say theoretically, but of course in playing, you also have to consider Physics.

Watch the video of one of the newest interesting games that uses mathematics in real life.

To those who are interested about ellipse, he has an explanation about in his book “The Grapes of Math: How Life Reflects Numbers and Numbers Reflect Life.”

You can find the website of the game here and watch extra footage in Youtube here.

One comment alex bellos, ellipse, math games, the loop game

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