Top Ten List
Items in red below are the ones I am (or have been) guilty of. Items in green are related comments.
10. Your personalized license plate reads MATH-4U
9. When practicing social distancing, you insist on ‘two meters’ space rather than ‘six feet’.
8. You tee off in golf, and instead of yelling “FORE!”, you yell “ROOT 16!”
7. As a conversation starter, you ask folks how many digits of PI they’ve memorized. Close, but technically never as a ‘conversation starter’.
6. If you’re male, one of your favorite pickup lines in your younger days was “You look just like Sonia Kovalevsky” (one of the earliest women mathematicians).
5. When someone passes age 23, you say they are past their PRIME.This ‘works’, of course, for ANY prime number. 🙂
4. You’ll drive 5 miles out of your way to watch the odometer reach a palindrome. And then you stop to take a picture to send to your ‘friends’.
3. You work with Santa to leave “I Love Math” pencils in all the Christmas stockings. Every year. The ‘kids’ now expect it and their ‘fake enthusiasm’ grows each year!
2. You rake all the Autumn leaves into a huge symbol of PI, then burn them like that to emblazon PI it into your lawn. (It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. 🙂 ).
1. You ask your doctor to report your cholesterol numbers in base 12 because it looks better.
FAVORITE (MATH) DAY OF THE YEAR
JUNE 28 (6/28)
TWO EQUALLY AMAZING REASONS:
- It’s the only day each year where both the month # and the day # are different perfect numbers.*
- It’s twice Pi-Day! (3.14 x 2 = 6.28)
* Perfect numbers are those whose factors (except the number itself) add up to the number. The first four perfect numbers are
6 (= 1 + 2 + 3)
28 (= 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14)
496
8128
These four were known to the early Greeks. There are currently only 50 know perfect numbers. (Most of them are HUGE, by any standard.)
Added Related Anecdote
Tara Jones – a former student worker at MSU, responded correctly to the ‘favorite day?’ challenge above. She said, “I remember that because you tried to talk me into using that date for my upcoming wedding!”
I confess that does sound like me! Brought me a good chuckle!
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