If you are familiar with the center of math, you probably know us by one or two avenues: you read our blog, which produces problems of the week and talks about math related news; or you have used one of our textbooks, and watched the videos that came along with it. Behind our mission, to bring accessible math materials into the world, is a community of mathematicians of all sorts. We would like to invite you to explore the Center of Math, and take some time to make that community grow. With new Facebook and YouTube introduction videos, finding your way around our little corner of the worldwide web has never been easier. The videos outline some features of the Worldwide Center of Mathematics' Facebook and Youtube pages, that you may want to know about.
Our Facebook page primarily serves as a place for our community to gather, and a hub to navigate around the Center of Math with ease. Visit the Facebook page and join the collective! Once on the page, you can click the learn more button to go to our main site, or use the menu on the left to explore more. Don't forget to like us on FB to stay in the loop.
The YouTube video helps serve as a starting point to our overwhelming library of math videos. Check it out yourself, and don't hesitate to dive right into our content! If you need some more direction, our 'playlists' tab is a great place to start, or just use the spotlight search to find a specific topic. Drop a subscribe if you like what you see, to never miss another math video.
These features are explained in greater detail in the welcome videos, so give them a watch, and we'll see you soon!
Its March 14th (3/14) and The Center of Math would like to wish everyone a happy Pi day! Weather today is an excuse to make pie, eat pie or throw it in someones face, we hope its a good one! Taking a trip back to basic mathematics, Pi (π) or 3.14, is the ratio of a circles circumference, its distance around, to its diameter. As Pi is a constant number, it will remain the same for all circles of any size.
History
The History of Pi dates back to the Old Testament of the Bible. The mathematician Archimedes used polygons with several sides to measure circles and concluded that Pi was approximately 22/7. The adoption of "π" was first used in 1706 by William Jones, symbolizing "p" for "perimeter." In more recent years, Pi has been calculated to more than one trillion digits past its decimal. However, only 39 digits past the decimal are required to calculate the spherical volume of our entire universe. Many find it an entertaining challenge to memorize as many digits as they can, especially today, when several Pi memorizing competitions take place.
To date, the longest recitation of Pi is held by Akira Haraguchi. On March 14, 2015 (last year's Pi day), the 60 year old man needed more than 16 hours to recite the number to 100,000 decimals, breaking his 1995 personal best of 83,431. Haraguchi developed a system where he assigns kana symbols, or Japanese scripts, to memorize Pi as a collection of stories. The same system was developed by C.S. Lewis, who assigned letters from the alphabet to numbers, creating stories to memorize numbers.
However, the Guinness Book of World Records has not yet accepted any of his records set, making them unofficial. The Guinness-recognized number of π is held by Rajveer, 21, reaching 70,000 digits. Rajveer wore a blindfold throughout the entire recall, which took nearly 10 hours.
Geometry
Tau VS Pi
Currently, the "Tau VS Pi" debate lies under the premise that,"pi is a confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant. Far more relevant, according to the algebraic apostates, is 2π, aka tau." Tau
supporters argue that mathematicians don't necessarily care about pi's ratio, a circles circumference with its diameter. Almost every mathematical equation about circles in written in terms of r for radius, and tau is the number that connects a circumference to that quantity.
Critics don't mean anything as been miscalculated, Pi still equals the same infinite string of never-repeating digits, however professor Robert Palais started the "pi is wrong" outburst with an article to match. The article delves into the various ways using tau in beneficial when learning and solving fundamental concepts in trigonometry. For example, with pi-based thinking, one third of a circle equates to two thirds pi radians, and three quarters around is one and a half pie radians. Sounds complicated for a beginner, right? By contract, a third of a circle is a third of tau, and three quarters of a circle is three quarters tau. Palais remarks, "the opportunity to impress students with a beautiful and natural simplification is turned into an absurd exercise in memorization and dogma."
Another major plus side of a universe where Pi is replaced by Tau, you get to eat twice as much pie on Tau Day!
On a lighter, more fun note, check out some Pi Day inspired youtube videos!
The Worldwide Center of Mathematics is dedicated to more venues of mathematics education than just textbooks, and for this reason we've made a new video series, detailing some of the basics and interesting concepts in the mathematical field of group theory. Keep reading to learn more...
The Center of Math is excited to announce a brand new event! Do you enjoy watching people do crazy things? Things that make you laugh? Things that make you thankful it's not you? If you do, you'll love our newest promotion, which is all about embarrassing our staff and entertaining our fans. So check out this video and keep reading to learn more!
Since we enjoyed writing about our favorite math-inspired Twitters, we decided that for this week we'd write about some of our favorite YouTube channels with math related content. Keep reading to see who made the list.
One of my favorite things to do at the Center is create video content for fun math topics. The intern here before me did two "Holiday Specials" around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I decided to continue his work! One of my first math videos was the Valentine's Day Special: Monty Hall problem. That one was a lot of fun.
This Sunday is Mother's Day (hi Mom!), so I took a math topic that I think is fun and themed it to fit the holiday. The Stable Marriage Problem is the famous mathematical scenario that we chose. Instead of a small village that has 10 women and 10 men who need to be paired in matrimony, we used mothers and the presents that their children picked out for Mother's Day.
Here at the Worldwide Center of Mathematics,
Tori, an intern working as the Assistant Director of Mathematical Content, has
been hard at work creating new math resources and posts. She’s recently starred
in several short videos that were made to help students study for the math
section of the ACT (the next exam is February 7th). Watch the playlist here! Tori is currently a math student at Northeastern University in Boston, and
truly enjoys breaking down math problems into simpler, understandable pieces.
Here's one of Tori's first ACT videos
From a big-picture perspective, we want
you, the students, parents, or teachers who watch these videos, to think of the
Center of Mathematics as your main resource for math help. Our founder, David
B. Massey, has given a multitude of lectures on his books and upper-level
mathematics that are all available on our Youtube channel. We are not
just a textbook publisher; we are a network of teachers and resources, and we
are here to help students learn the intricacies of their mathematics courses.
A video from the second ACT shoot
We know that standardized,
college-admission tests may seem daunting. They put a lot of pressure on the
student, both in terms of time and emotion. They require quick recall of
subjects learned all throughout high school. Our videos are meant to help train
you to approach ACT or SAT math problems as simply as possible. Often you’ll
see Tori use the same methods in several videos- that’s because she knows the
techniques to simplify the problems. Math isn’t everyone’s favorite subject,
but with Tori’s help (and the help of past and future interns), we can
hopefully ease the burden and relax the stigma that is associated with
mathematics on standardized tests.
If you have any questions or
suggestions for future videos, let us know in the comments!
May 15, 2014 - The winners of the first-ever Center of Math YouTube Scavenger Hunt have been drawn!
The first $50 Amazon Gift Card winner is Bailey G., who was the first to complete the challenge.
The two randomly drawn winners were David M. and Heather H.
92% of respondents correctly answered the final challenge problem.
Missed the hunt? The annotations have been removed so as not to disturb studying students. Here's a list of the clues and the final challenge problem.
To start the hunt, take the blue pill or the red pill. Then multiply them.
This rule is necessary to find the derivative of sin(x^2)
An integral that forgot its manners
How long was Noah’s Boat?
I’ve had it with these #$%& vectors on this #$%& plane!
Please enter your password again to verify your identity
Snoitcnuf Girt
Before you continue, make sure your integration skills R squared away!
The Center tweeted a link to this video on April 11th
The angry piece of merchandise
At Least you’ve made it this far, probably
A student has 5 heavy textbooks to carry around. The masses of each
textbook in grams are 966, 340, 955, 1722, and 662. What is the average
mass of this student’s textbooks?
___ Mass Ave.
Answer: 929
______________________________________
May 1, 2014
The Worldwide Center of Mathematics is sending you on a scavenger hunt. You'll solve math-related clues to reach a final challenge problem. Submit the correct answer at www.centerofmath.org/hunt for your chance to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card!
The Center of Math traveled south from their headquarters in Cambridge, MA to attend the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2014 in Baltimore, MD. The conference is the largest mathematics meeting in the world, attracting over 6,000 students, educators and more. The Center of Math brought along a video camera and created a short video showing some of the numbers behind the trip. Enjoy!
Brought to you by the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, Worldwide Math Shorts is a brand new collection of videos introducing important basic and foundational mathematics concepts. The videos are now available free on the Center of Math YouTube Channel.
Here at the Center, we are dedicated to providing 1) top-to-bottom coverage of the concepts you need to know and 2) the additional resources you’ll need to master them. Worldwide Math Shorts, featuring Tom Lewis (Northeastern University ‘15), was created to better serve the needs of math students, instructors and the greater community. The collection is comprised of six parts, including the basics of derivatives, integrals, matrices, probability, trigonometry, and vectors.
The topics were chosen to provide viewers with a better understanding of the early concepts essential to executing advanced calculus, differential equations, or linear algebra. Short and sweet, the videos are great for any aspiring mathematician, and serve as especially helpful “refreshers” for those using Center of Math textbooks. Each video introduces basic definitions and concepts followed by worked examples.
As we continue to expand our collection of study/help videos and resources, we want to hear from you! Which topics do you need help with? What kind of video or topic would you like to see the Center of Math produce next? Leave your comments or send your thoughts to info@centerofmath.org.
Center of Math Productions are recorded in the Center of Math Studio Classroom space in Cambridge, MA. The Center of Math was established to strengthen the math community by providing free and affordable resources for all.
If you are familiar with the center of math, you probably know us by one or two avenues: you read our blog, which produces problems of the week and talks about math related news; or you have used one of our textbooks, and watched the videos that came along with it. Behind our mission, to bring accessible math materials into the world, is a community of mathematicians of all sorts. We would like to invite you to explore the Center of Math, and take some time to make that community grow. With new Facebook and YouTube introduction videos, finding your way around our little corner of the worldwide web has never been easier. The videos outline some features of the Worldwide Center of Mathematics' Facebook and Youtube pages, that you may want to know about. 
