What is Yellow Pig's Day?

You are perhaps wondering what the Center of Math is doing posting about a holiday dedicated to yellow pigs. Was this meant for another blog? Is the Center of Math announcing that they're now the Center of Pork Artistry? To answer those questions, no, and not in the foreseeable future.

Yellow Pig's day is actually a celebration of the number 17. In the 1960's, a pair of math students at Princeton were discussing the many properties of 17, and decided that there should be a day to celebrate it. Ultimately the date they decided was July 17th! Thus, Yellow Pig's Day was born. Why Yellow Pig's Day? One of the students discussing 17 decided that the mascot of the holiday should be a yellow pig with 17 eyelashes, 17 teeth, and 17 toes.

Here are some of the properties of 17 that make it worthy of a mathematical holiday:

-17 is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of a cube and a square in 2 different ways (8+9=17 and 1+16=17)

-It is also the smallest number that is the sum of two powers of 4 (1+16=17)

-17 is the minimum number of givens in a Sudoku puzzle for the puzzle to have a unique solution

-In Italy, 17 is a lucky number. In Roman numerals, 17 is written as XVII, which is an anagram of VIXI, which means 'my life is over' in Italian.

-Depending on how you look at it, 17 is either the most random or the least random number. In a study in which respondents were asked to pick a random number between 1 and 20, 17 was the number that was selected the most. Is it the most random because the most people decided it was the most random? Or is it the least random because the most people chose that number?

-17 is the only prime number that is the sum of 4 consecutive prime numbers (2+3+5+7=17), which is possible because 2 is the only even prime number and the smallest prime number. The sum of any other 4 consecutive primes will be even, and thus won't be prime.

-And, finally, as all ABBA fans know, 17 is the age of all young, sweet Dancing Queens

There is no one way to celebrate the holiday, but this haiku (a poem with 17 syllables!) should offer a good starting point:

Spend time with some friends,
Hug a mathematician,
And have a good time!

Problem of the Week 7-4-19: A 7-Tuple of Integers [Algebra]

Check out this Problem of the Week.
Be sure to let us know how you solved it in the comments below or on social media!

Solution below.

The Career Mathematician, Vol. 1 — Dr. Walter Sun

So you love mathematics. What next? The Career Mathematician highlights interesting and relevant work and insights offered by professional mathematicians, statisticians, logicians and more.

The Career Mathematician, Vol. 1 -- Dr. Walter Sun

Ever wonder how predictive technology works? Click here to learn how the Principal Applied Science Manager and Bing Predicts Team Lead, Dr. Walter Sun, leverages technology and some careful calculations to improve Microsoft's "Bing Predicts" feature.

Not sure this is the career for you? Click the image below for some inspiration.

For the Love of Gifs

How many times have you been sitting in a classroom, trying to wrap your head around some unbelievably abstract concept, and no matter what the professor says or how many times the professor explains herself, you just know that you’re missing some essential piece of the puzzle. Then your professor sketches a basic picture on the blackboard and suddenly it clicks and there is a collective sigh of relief among you and your classmates.

There have been countless studies which show that multimedia enhances learning and can enrich a student’s understanding of a concept. For the most part, when talking about educational multimedia, only pictures, slideshows, and videos come to mind; but lets take a look at what gifs bring to the table.

Gifs, or the Graphics Interchange Format, are small animations or a quick, couple-second video that constantly repeat. They are commonly found cluttering up a article on Buzzfeed, or being shared on Facebook or Twitter, but there are some great math gifs roaming around on the internet.

Take this one for example:  A lot of people in high school learn how to use the trigonometric functions, but never fully understand where they come from. Seeing this gif becomes an “Aha!” moment for some people and they finally see why the unit circle is important and why trigonometric functions are periodic.

Or how about this one: We’ve all sat in a linear algebra class, been given this behemoth algorithm of calculations to perform for the Gram-Schmidt process and tried our best to memorize it. Doesn’t seeing it in action clear things up a little bit?

Remember line integrals?

Or how about Fourier Series?

(Speaking from experience, I took a whole class on Fourier Analysis, and it only ‘clicked’ after seeing these)

The great thing about gifs, is that they are short enough that they do not become boring, they will endlessly repeat until you understand, and are aesthetically pleasing. So, do yourself a favor and check out some math gifs. They don’t even have to be serious. Here are some of our favorites that are just fun to watch:

Nested Rotating Hypocycloids by Dan Craig via Wikimedia Commons

Inside-Out Torus                                                                  by Surot via Wikimedia Commons

Relationship between Radius and Radians by Lucas V. Barbosa via Wikimedia Commons

Construction of Hypotrochoid                            by Sam Derbyshire via Wikimedia Commons

Hyperboloid Constructed of Straight Lines by Cmapm via Wikimedia Commons

Homotopy between a Torus and a Mug        by Lucas V. Barbosa via Wikimedia Commons

Special thanks to Lucas V. Barbosa for creating all the public domain gifs in the main post. See more of his work here.

Do you have any good gifs of your own? Post them in the comments and we might add them to our list of favorites!

January Recap

January Recap 

As 2015 came to a close, the mathematical world was welcomed into the New Year with several groundbreaking achievements. As mathematical discoveries and events reached new heights, the center of math did not hesitate to broadcast January’s exciting content.

Our first post of 2016 revolved around the importance of math degrees and how they can be used for much more than the obvious. The CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, perfectly exemplified this notion by describing how his Dartmouth Math Degree proved far more beneficial than a Harvard MBA. Business Insider reports Immelt’s views, “ I use my math major every day – I don’t use the MBA quite as much… My intellectual curiosity goes more toward problem solving than spreadsheets.”

Shorty after, the Center of Math traveled to Seattle to participate in the largest mathematics meeting in the world - Joint Mathematics Meetings. This event proved very successful as faculty was lining up to receive free digital copies of our material.

If you are a faculty member at any institution interested in free digital copies, click the link below to fill out a contact request form.

http://centerofmath.org/resources/index.html#subject6

Blogs

Looking back on the month, the Center of Math focused several blog posts on specific January-based events. Top stories include odds and statistics surrounding the January 13^th Powerball. As many played the Powerball with a glimmer of hope that they would walk away with around 900 million, most were disappointed. Our blog post takes a comedic spin when discussing the reality of the lottery.

Next, in preparation for black history month and commemorating Martin Luther King’s triumphs, we dedicated a blog post to mathematician Elbert Cox. Cox, the first African American to receive a Ph.D in mathematics, was a pivotal component in the equality and expansion of the mathematical world. 

Problem's of the Week

Our math experts Jacob and Chloe create problems and explain fascinating math concepts.  Listed below are some of January’s most popular classic problems and advanced knowledge problems of the week.

Chloe

                

                     

Problem of the week: Solution and Archive   Advanced Problem of the week: Solution and Archive

 Jacob         

Watch Jacob play Hyper Rouge, a video game that shows off properties of hyperbolic space

Watch Jacob solve classic math problems in under a minute

January’s Top 

#WiseWordsWednesday's

       

#ThrowbackThursday's 

#FunFriday's 

Stay tuned for more!