ne 10 A Date watt ESin the Sky is a semiannual publication of The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences PINS is pyr tal by the Nana Seer and Engnering > aon Coll of Cin the Bast Coa Iori Sita and Teta Alengy Abeta San aan at ecircy Auahera Geter ra Uneasy te Ces tee te intestate Enemy of Norte ‘British Coltenioa, and the Urnvcnsity of Letioridge This journal is devotal to cultivating mathematicnl reasoning and problem-solving skills, to prepare students for the challenges of the high-technology era, Eéitors in Chie ‘Nant Gheureoub (University of Britis Cokbia) Mer (0a) Sane malt dr opmnesmatas Whslew Kraweewice (Crassnsty of Aeris) THE (mo) 4 16s Bonen wetaudcsiecom, “Associate Editors ‘ohn Bownan (Unkemniy of Abts) TRE Gao) 2 Pont boned une.ca Dragos Prive (Unnemiy cf Asti) Renta) See Ema smut anata Editorial Board Peter Horweln (Sinn Frat Unheriy) Te (ouy rts Ean plarweneaticn Florin Discs (Unberityof'Visors) Re Gay tbsem Emmi decrtnghanices lens Hacer (Unie of id Conus) {Re (Go) S00, Pam tokens ‘Michel Lamoureine (uve of Cass) JR Clap 2aneo1e Espa teeny ‘Tel Lewes (Gnnenig’ Albena) 4 (an, i hv ‘Technical Assistant hes Wang (Ua of Abert) JRE Ga) EEE Ea lneteuaerta.ca Addresses: tthe Sy Bulut ante x (Ge Mathes Scimeze ia the Sey ace Tastitae for the Mathematical Scenes 501 Camera Acidic Big 185 West Nall Uninerigy of Alleria Unherity of Britt Colsnbia Eapeotn, Aber Vasconer, B.C. Tee 2G1, Camda Vor 122, Canal ‘hE 0) deat Roe (780) 402196 ‘Tut (60) soa Fi (OBI) S088 tal: poops mathca eeepc Subscriptions: (7e0) 42-408 Contributions Welcome {tle iy acting era onan bec ms tonatemats tenes belie tikes proba, cartoons, ters to the pobleher an accepted ss Uae ade iets ely eeu nn = ‘aul edcatta (be sige to inclice Your al i. Weakoweccme Letter to the crampbenty ieee ‘mo ml ple “eprint my is hn ea Cover page: ‘The piture on the caer page (alan ty Bil Bean Sots Relknis al the Nala MCh Sea pot rah Bs af Ula Sheol in Ezbnontin = courtesy of th principal Kare Lino “A few words from the director of PIMS Lan very plessed to welcome © the Shy, as a mew anal Initiative of te Pacifle Institute for he Mathematical Sconces. ‘This journal represents a major Inillestone in the Inission of cuit institute! to promote fe= Search iny and applications of the matlmatieal selancesy {fo be proactive in the training of young people, and to em te : es their discgverias, the Joy they Feige sy naturally complemeras the my othr PEMS, ‘ntlatives talus Change ‘The birth of vie Sty showesbes the underlying pri iple'on Which PIMS is founded! that fs main resource = ‘etins articles for this very first iuoy My best wishes to all ‘wordt (you for an uneualified succoss of this itiative Nasi Ghousoub, FRSC Director, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sclonces CONTENTS: ‘The Perfect Education System for an Affluent Society, by Andy Li. Solving Problems can be Fun, by Ambilestvar Shara, Against all odd How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! by Laurent W. Marcoux by Byron Sdhnmaland .. Similarity and Dimensionality, by Mark Solomonovich .. 5 ‘The Baw Principle, vy Drags Heine rt) Diplomna Exams, by Wiest Krawcowice sssssssses0620 Math Challenges . 2 Forum and Links esses sees 4y.. 4 racy LA The Perfect Education System for an Affluent Society ‘Andy Liu Newcomers to North America, especially those with children of school age, are often appalled by the gener ally low acarlemic standards of our schools. Bocanse it is nominally free, itis not in the cconomie interest of the school boards to keep the children in schools for any longer than they are legally required to do, As a result, promo= tion from grade to grade is automatic, whether or not the children have accomplished anything at all. To make this seem acoontable, the academic standard is set deliber= ately low so that failure is practically impossible, However, it may be argued that this system is precisely ‘what North America wants and needs, ‘The academic stan- dard in the former Soviet Union was certainly very high, and a large number of well-qualified people were prochiced. Unfortunately, the country did not have enough good jobs, so that mest of them were undersemployed. ‘Their frus trations tumed them into dissidents and eventually, the government was brought down. While the fall of the Soviet Empire may be considered a very good thing in North America, such was certainly not the view of these wo tumbled from power, This isa lesson not lost on the governments in North Americas A country only needs a very stall number of wellqtalified people to fill the top jobs. Tt is important for the masses who will be frying hamburgers in MeDonald’s or doing other Jobs to be content with their lot. In an affluent their livelihood is more than acceptable. It is therefore the jpb of the schools to make sure that the majprity of the sinidents wall not be qualified for amy= thing better. ‘The motto is that everyone has the God sven right to bea fool. Children in many other cultures do not enjoy this right. IF they ever aspire in that direction, they will be beaten back to the straight and narrows. Here, students and teachers, as well as children and parents, can lead a relatively peaceful and democratic onexistence, How does North America maintain its eminence in sci- entificand technological advances? Recent history showed that it simply stole the best that were prochtoal by other countries, However, its own education system, discredited though it might have boon, had also producr! talents that take second place to no others in the world. How is this possible? ‘The answer lies in the total absence of pressure in the schools, Subjects that arouse no passion in the students can safely be ignored), For those who have no passion in anything, this leaves a lot of time to play or sleep. For those who are sufficiently selFmotivate, the time can be spent on subjects of their interest, with the result that they could devote much more effort on them than sti dents from other countries. Granted, the mumber of such students is very small, but then, we only require enough of them to mect the needs of society. (Our final point is that our society is increasingly dome inated by commercial concerns. Science and technology have become subservient to business needs, ‘The econ omy is largely driven by advertisements. If our schools teach our students properly, they will begin to soe that the advertisements area load of utter nonsense, ‘This will certainly bring about the end of civilization as we know it, is that what schools are supposed to do? About the Author: Andy Li's ambition was to be an ele= mentary school teacher, so he eampketed a Bachelor of Science degree ab McGill University and then came to the University of Alberta to got a deamce in Education, He ended up doings a PhD. in mathematics as well and becanse he was 90 highly ‘qualified he found it difficult to get. a permanent position as an elementary teacher. He eventually joined the Mathemat cal Sciences Department at the University of Alberta in 1980, He proceed to establish a reputation a a top teacher of mathematics and asa worklewicle spokesman for contests in inthematics (which are a very big deal in muy countries). He abo started a program called SMART (Saturday Matho- rmatical Activities, Recreation and Tutorials) for Junior High students, entirely’ on his own, funded principally out of his xm pode. Over the years he accumulated an impressive list of awards: Faculty of Scienoe Teaching Award, University of Alberta Rutherford Teaching Avant, Faculty of Engineering ‘Teaching Award. He and Muay Klamkin cooched the US. ‘Mathematical Olympiad ‘Team to top standings in several ne tematicnal Mathematical Olympiads, “Then in 1996 the ne tiomal and intemationl awands started to arvive: © 1986; ‘The David Hilbert International Awan for the promotion of of Mathematics World Wide (awarded by the World Faceration of National Mathematics Competi tom). 1968: Distinguished Filucater of the Year (awarded by the Ontario Institute for Stuces in Edcatien, University Toronto). ‘1900; Canadian Univesity Professor of the Year (awarded by The Counel for the Advancement and Support of Ede uucation, and the Canadian Council for the Advancement, of Eilucation). © 1900: Named a 3M ‘Teaching Fellow, ane of up to 10 nae tioned anvards giver. annually by the 3M Corporation. © 1990: The Michael Smith Award for the Promotion of Sci ence, awarded anally by Industry Casiada in honour of |(Canadian Nobel Prize winner Michael Smith (Chemistry, 1968), No University Professor in Canada can claim such a list of honows. Andy is a demanding, but popular teacher, exactly as he prefors His respect for students & immense, but he demands that they learn to think, and he does it in a finn and supportive mamer. We all bust by paying attention to the perceptions of a persen who has devoted so nmich thought and energy to the teaching and Fearing of methematies, (a. sss) BB math Jokes [As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality, ate newt sms) Tve heard that the government wants to put a tax on the nethenatically ignorant. Funny, I thought that's what the lottery was! c: ‘Your: man, in mathematics you don’t understand things, {yOu just got usod to them, sin we Sewen ame “You do not really understand something unless you cat exphin it to your grandmother.” Albert Einstein Life is complex, Tt has weal and imaginary components toe (Copemicus’ parents: Copernicus, yours man, when are you ping to come to terms with the fact that the work docs not revolve around you?! ss teams ‘An astronomer is on an expedition to darkest Africa to ob- serve a total eclipse of the sun, which will only be observable there, when he's captured by cumubals. The eclipse i due the next day around noon. ‘To gain his freeclom he plans to pose as apd and tiueaten to extinguish the sun if Le'S not released, Dut the timing has to be just right. So, in the few words of the caumibals’ primitive tangne that he knows, be asks hiss ged what time they plan to kill him, ‘The guard's answer is “Ladition bes it that captives are to be killed when the sun reaches the hizhest point in the sky on the day after their capture so that they may be cooked and aly to be serval for the evening meal,” ‘SGreat,” the astronomer replies, ‘The guard contimes, though, “But because everyene’s 90 excited about it, in your case we'R going to wait until ater the eclipee.” Statistics are like a bikini - what they noveal is suggestive, Dut what they conceal & vit Solving Problems can be Fun Ambikeshwar Sharma. Sometimes simple mathematical problems are put to yomat a time and at a place when you least expect them. I beliewe that it pays to face them and to try to understand them and if possible to solve them, AS a student of math ematics it is not fair to refuse to attend to the problem or to pass it off with a contemptuous wave of the hand, ‘This conviction came to me by an event that happened to me several years ago when T was going by an evening overnight train from Lucknow to Allahabad, India, Later this conviction became all the more strongly ene trenched in my mind when T came to Edmonton about, S6,yeans back. Here Tine for the first time Prof. Leo Moser who was a simple, courteous and soft spoken person fll of anendotes, humor and problems. Although the depart ment was stall and had no separate building to itself Loo Moser was the centre of activity discussing problems ‘with any one who cared to listen. He had a photographic memory and was an excellent chess player. [learned that he coull play chess against 20 or 30 teams of students from different schools at the same time and would win against all of them, In the faculty Jonge in the department, he ‘would discuss problems or tell anccrotes to his students. Anyone who came in and wanted to listen was welcome. One day I heard him talking toa student about Blidy- feldt’s Lemma, T had heard about it but I did not, know ‘what it was and why it was important, Professor Moser then explained! to me how this Jemma was provell by an American mathematician, Blichfeldt, It states that if there is a plane region 7? of any shape with an area more than rumits, then it is always possible to translate (ies, slide withont turing) it in such a way that it covers n-+1 lattice points (with integer coordinates). In particular, he explainall by a sketch on the blackboard that for nm = 1, there is a pair of distinct points in the area A that can be translated into two distinct points A and B with coordi= nates (11,41) and (22, yp) such that rary and yp — yn are both integers. He explained to me another time how this Jemma was used by Minkowski to solve a problem of Hilbert about an orchard calle ‘the orchard problem. Like the Scottish Problem Book of problems in \\ saw (Poland), he had startel a book of problems in ‘which visitors and anyone who has a problem oould put, his problem in blads and white. His contacts with poo pile like Martin Gardner, Prof. P. Turin, Prof. P. Erdis, Prof. D.J. Nowman and many others brought us the visitsof some of these well known people. Once I showed him a poem called “Song of a Ph.D.” a parody written on the Jines of Gilbert and Sullivan, which [had heard at Cornell. He mad the poom and could recite it the next day. I still recall the first stanza, which runs like this: When was a bid and went to school, Anillanetic was taught by rote and n J ditt long division and I did cube roots, Ab the Rule of Three, I was specially astute, Towns so astule at the Rule of Three, ‘That now Lam the holder of a Ph.D. Professor Moser was very hospitable and the evening par= ties at his home were always a treat. His passing away at an early age due to a heart attack was a serious blow to the Department. One of his last students Prof. David Kklarner is known for his work on Polyominoes. ‘To return to the circumstance of the event that hap» pened tome in India, when Twas working at the Unie versity of Lucknow: T wante to go to Allahabad by the overnight evening train and to consult the University le brary there during the day and return the nest evening back to Lucknow. T could not afford the hocury of a first lass or second class ticket and so bought a third class re- tum ticket, T arrived at ther tation half an hour earlier than the schoduled departure time in order to ace «quite an upper berth (if possible) and at best a comiort= able seat away from the tumlt and mish of passengers. I decided to take a seat that Jookex! promising but noticed that a gentleman was ambling outside with an eye on his suitcase. He had already occupied the upper berth and had spread his blanket there for the night and so [had to occupy the lower berth. A few mimites later the gentleman came in and Tearned from him that he wasa businessman who was going to Ale Jahabad on some business. He had a big store in a fashion= able area in Aminaberl. 1 told him that Iwasa lecturer at the University and taught mathematics, He seemed happy to learn this and askex! me if I could solve two questions {for hit that his son liad asked him and that he could not, do, Ttold him that I would give his problems a try aud invited him to state them, My companion started telling ane the first problenz Problem 1. A man was badly in need of an honest, hard working servant to Jook after his cows and do all the household work, as his wife was sick and could not manage the job. He was willing to pay him food and lodging and a dollar a day, paid monthly, but the servant must do all the jobs. He confided! his problem to a close friend of his who promised to look around and find a good chap. In a few days his friend, a goldsmith by profession, brought him a young sturdy fellow who was willing to do all the work for the salary offered, except that there would be a condition that he wanted the master to accept. The condition requited by this servant was that if he decided! to leave on a certain day’ he must get the exact salary up to that day. If the master were table to pay’ the exact, amount up to that day, the master would have to pay a severe penalty’ of losing some body part (nose and ea Sinoe the man needed! a servant badly; he agreed to the terms without much thought. The servant did prove to be excellent and he did all the jobs well without mmr oF dissent. But the master began to worty about the terms impeseel by the servant andl this worry made him sick. He again told his difficulty to his friend, the goldsmith, who askex him to be of good cheer. He asked him to give him $31 and in return he gave him five gold rings, which he was askex! to pnt on his fingers. My companion asked me to tell him the price of each of these golden rings with which he could pay his strange servant if he decided to Jeave on any day of the next month, ‘went over the problem with him again to get some time to think, By this time other passengers were streaming in and our compartment was getting filled up. After a few mimites I was Incky to get the solution for my friend and ‘when I told him the price of each of the five rings, he was happy. His socond problem was as fllowss Problem 2. ‘Three men with a monkey bought some ‘mangos, but decided to eat the mangos next morning after the night’s sleep. At night one of the men got up and saw that if he gave one mangp to the monkey, he could divide the rest of the mangos into three equal groups. So he ate his share and gave one mango to the monkey. Later a scoond person got up and he also noticed that if he gave one mango to the monkey he could divide the remaining ‘mangps into three equal groups, So he gave one mango to the monkey and ate his share of the mangos and went to sleep. Finally the third man got up and gave one mango to the monkey and ate his share of the mangos and went, to skep. When all of them got up in the moraing, the again found that if they gave one mango to the monkey they could divide the rest equally among themselves. The problem is to determine the smallest possible nmber of mangos that the men had bought. “The train had now startel. My companion insisted that Toccupy the upper berth while he would share his lower berth with two others. By the time the train arrived at the next station Twas able to announce to my friend that the stmallest number of mangos in the socond problem wes 79. Although we had no pen. or paper, T could explain to him how I obtained the solution and he ould verify the result. The next morning as the train steamel in at, Allahabad, my friend woke me up andl we parted! as good friends, Iwas happy to have earned a friend by my effort, to solve his problems, Problem 3. Ifyou can find the day of the weok from the date of birth of a person, you can make a good impressionin any company and it becomes great fun to demonstrate this to the guests of the evening. This kind of problem is called a Calendar Problem, We recall that the calendar that we use now is the Gregorian Calendar started by the Pope Paul Gregory in 1582 who fixed the days in the year as 365 but that every fourth year would be a leap year except when it is divisible by 400. Tins 1700, 1800, 1900 are not Ieap years, while 2000 is a leap year. If we loop in mind that the days of the week recur every 7% day, all calculations in calendar problems are bases] on congrie ence modulo 7! ‘To givea convenient and easy formula for calenlating the day of the week, when a particular date 7 falls, we make the following conventions: ‘The days of the week are munbers as follows: = Sunday = Monday = Theslay Wornesday = Thurslay = Friday = Saturday We shall munber the months in the following way: = March, = April = May = Jue = July August = September = October = November December Jamery February: ‘This curious mumbering is chosen becanse in each leap year February gets an extra day. So it is convenient to begin a year with March and to close it with February. ‘Then Febrnary 28, 1999 will be considered as the last day of 1998. If someone is born on the r# day of the mt! month of the year (00C + D, 0 < D < 98, then we can obtain d the day of the week by the following: 1 Cy, 2) p d=r+ -x+0+[S]+[F (mod 7) where [2°] = integral part of 2. Lot us calculate the day of the werk for July 13, 1988, Here r= 13,m = 5,C = 19, D=38, Then Tivo Rigas aw cg module 7 if thy lave th same romaite dren valli. + [uae | —2-19-+38 + [4] + [8] (aoa 7) 3+ [8] — 38438 + [4B] + [9] (mod 7). +6, that 13 = 6(nod7), [# 4, [8] =9 = 26nd 7). el! “Therefore July 13, wes ia t 1 ‘Then d= 645-4442 1938 falls on a Wednesda 18 3S 1S 71S 2 W]qOIg OF caMsu You can find more information about the author at the Internet address: Ittp:/ /wwewnath.ualberta.cn/People/Faeiltypages/Sharmna.A Jit BB math Jokes “Tkraw you handed in almost every cssignment. You amost harded in fone this week, you almost handed inj one last week. Ceri ty Wane Krme “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupa and Pm not sure about the universe.” Albert Einstein A famous statistician would never travel by airplane, because he had sturic air travel and estimated the probability of there being a bomb on any given fight was 1 in a million, ane! he ‘was nt prepared to accept these ods. One day a.collenzue met him at a conference far fom hame, "How did you get heres by tain?” “oy Tews” “What about your the possibility of a tomb?" Well, I began thinking that if the ockls of one bomb are 11000000, then the olds of TWO bonis are sar * - This is a very, very stall protnbilty, which T can g my onm bam along!” (ate Cos) accept. So, now I bring nAgainst all odds ron Schmuland In 1975, when I was a high school student, the Cana- dian government held its first lottery, to help cover the costs of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. In those days lotteries were unheard of, and this one offered one Canadian the cance of winning a million dollars at the bce often dollars per tice "The acta da was tle vise live, as the climzrs of an houlong variety show. was vory excited. T didn’t win, Nowadays, of course, Jotteries are no big; deal. ‘They have become part of our daily life, with chances to win prizes big and swall on practically every day of the werk. Ever since blowing ten bucks in 1975, Pve been fascinated. with calculating the odds in games and lotteries. Td like toshow you how to calculate the chances in some different games, and finish off with a discussion of Lotto 6-49. In solving this kind of problem, the munbers involved are very large, but the idea is quite simple: the chance of an event is the ratio of favorable outcomes to the to- tal munber of outcomes. A branch of mathematics called ‘combinatorics helps us count these big numbers. The Probability Formula. se dence ofan evens = Member f cable nes ee Ee ee cea auaer of cna For instance, the total mmber of outcomes in Lotto 6-49 is 13.983 S16, So, your oxds of hitting; the jackpot are about one in fourteen million! But how do they come up with the number 13.983 816? Did someone have to sit down with a paper and pencil, and write out all the different things that could happen? ‘The answer is no, to find the number of outcomes you don’t have to list them out; you just use some basic mathe amatics. Let me show you, but belore we ty to tadde the Lotto 619 problem we'll warm up with some simpler problems. Rolling the dice. ‘What's the chance of rolling, a Ei, if you roll a fair die? Sinev all possible outcomes aw FEFEHE}ELER and there is only one favorable outcome 3, the chance s 1/6. What's the chance of rolling at least one if you roll ‘two fair dice? ‘The set of possible outcomes is illustrated GG OS OF OB aia Of BS GS GE Se BG Ge AE ee Ea Ee a Be ae a Ee ee ee EE Counting these up we find that there are 36 possi ble outoomes, ‘The outcomes that have at least_one [El are PES FSIES ESC) 6303.63 (2) EE, [EF Since there are eleven of these, the chance of rolling at least one FA with two fair dice is 11/36. If we want to go any farther, we need ways of counting, the nunber of outeomes without actually listing then all, out. Luddy, the multiplication rule comes to the rescue. "The umiltiplication rule. ‘The muuber of pairs equal to the rmmber of choices for the first object times the umber of choices for the second object. ‘This also works {or tripks, quadmuples, etc. ‘The mniltiplication rule says that, sinee there are 6 choices for each roll, the tmmber of pairs is 6x 6= 36, Hey! This is exactly how many we optinted above. How about the number of paits with at least one EY Here we can't apply the multiplication nile directly. Let's look at the opposite problem, and count the munber of pairs with no sixes. If ‘we don't allow i, we have five choices for the first die and five for the second, so there are 5 x 5 = 25 pairs with no Ek So the mmber of pairs with at least one six must be 36-25 = 11. ‘The chanee of getting at least one six with a pair of dice is 11/365. Doyousee what happened? We just soled the two dice problem without listing the outcomes. ‘The nioe thing is that the same idea works no matter how mary’ dice we tise. Suppose we roll ten dice, ‘The total number of outcomes is 6x 6x 6X6X6x 6x 6X 6x6 x 6= 60-466 176, ‘The number of outcomes with no BE is 5 x 5 x 5 x 5x 5x 5x 5x 5x5 x5 = 9705025, so thow are 60 405 176 = 9 765 625 = 50700 551 outcomes with at least one E. The chance of rolling at least one Ei with ten dice is 50 700 551/60 406 176 0.8885: about an SAY% chance.Birthdays. Do you know anyone in your class that has the same birthday as you? You might be surprised to find that matching birthdays are not that unusual. Lets figure out the chances of a shared birthday Tam gping to use the number 30 as the class size: you could find the chance in the same way for any other class We ignore leap years and assume that there are 365 pos sible birthdays. An outcome is just a list of 30 birthdays, so the multiplication rule says that the total mmber of onttoomes is 365 = 72392 x 10 point ‘The munber of outcomes without a shared birthday is +X 336 = 2171 x 10. Why? There second porson's birthday must be different, there are only 364 choices. The third person's birthday must be different than both of the first two, leaving 363 choices, etc. By subtracting we find that the number of outcomes ited birthday’ is 72392 x 10" = 2171 x 10 11 x 10%, and so the chance of a shared birthday (5.221 x 10)/ (7.02% 10™) = 0.70836, about 70% with If you wonder where the formulas come from... ‘The number of ways to order n distinct objects is calle! “n factoriad” and is writen nl’ = nx (n= 1) x ++ 1. Ifyou don't use the whole set, the number of ‘ordered! sets ofr objects chosen from n distinct objects isnx (n=) xx (n=r +1) = n/n") Each unordered set of sizer corresponds tor! distinct ‘ordered sets, so we must divide by r! to get the number of such unordered sets This value is called “choose 1 and written ("!) = nl/ri(n =r) For instance, Suppose that r= 3. Then all si or dered sets ABC, CAB, CBA ccomespond to the same unordered set {4 2,C'}. The number of unordered sets is one-siah the number of ordered sets. The 52-card shufile. Shuflling a deck of cards puts them into a particular order, What is the probability that someone else, some- time in the past, has shuffled a deck of cards into the exact same order? ‘The munber of different ways to order aa dock of cands is 52! = 8.0658 10". To understand how big this number is, let us suppose that everyone on arth, from the beginning of time, has been doing nothing Dnt sluifing cards and checking what order the ded is, in, Let’s overdo it, and suppose that mankind has been, on earth for a million years, and that the population of the earth was constantly equal to 10 billion. If we can do one shuffle per second, then the total number of shuffles in history is 10 000 G00 000 x 1 000 000 365240061 3:1536% 10%, ‘This is less than one billionth of one billionth of one billionth of the total munber of possible shuilles. By shuffling an ordinary deck of cards, you've created some thing that has never existed before in the history of the universe! Try this at home! Now that P've convineod you that the munber of possible shutfles for a deck of cards is inetodibly large, you may find the following game quite inter- esting, Take two decks of cards and shuffle both of them thoroughly. Give one deck to a friend and place both your decks face down. Now, at ‘the same time, you and your friend tum over your top card, Are they the Sane card? No? Then try again with the second card, the third card, ete. If yo go throngh the whole dec, do you thinks you ‘and your friend will ever turn over the sune card? Try it and sec! Lotto 6-49, ‘The mest popular lottery in Canada is Lotto 69. Six distinct numbers are randomly chosen from 1 to 49 and your prize depends on how many of these match the nme bers on your tidket. If you match three numbers you win ten dollars, and if you match all sic munbers you win the Jackpot. Of cours, there are other prizes for matching 4 for 5 munbers, as well. What are your chances? ‘The number of possible ticket’ combinations is (19) = 13.983 816. Your lance of winning the jackpot therelon is one out of 13 983 816, which is 7-15 x 10-%, As for matching three mumbers, consider the numbers from 1 to 49 as divided into two groups: the six numbers on your ticket, and the forty-thnee mumbers that aren’t, on Your ticket. ‘To win ten dollars you neal exactly three from the first group, and three fiom the seond group. ‘The number of Lotto 6-49 drawings of that type is 4), casyayan @x(3) x CGE See 20% 12 3A ‘Thus, the chance of matching exactly three mumbers is 246 820/13 983 816 = 0.017 We can find all the Latto 6-49 probabilities in the same way. The bottom of the ratio is always exgial to the total rnuinber of Lotto 6-49 draws: (#8). "The top of the ratioalways has two terms, 43 choose something times 6 choose something, The term with 43 represents the munber of ‘ways to choose from the 43 values not on your ticket, and the other term represents the number of ways to choose from the 6 values on your ticket. Ifyou think of the num- bers as ‘ypod” or “had” aggonling to whether they are on your tiekot or not, then (2) (2) is the mumaer of draws thait result in 6 bad mumbers and O good munbers. Sine ilarly, (2) (9) is 5 bad mumbers and 1 good number, and so on. ‘The following table gives the complete Ievedonen on. Lotto 6-49. Matches Probability Be 0 ao 0.43506 497! a 1 Sep = 0.41301 94505 @Q 2 cm 0.13237 80290 BE 3 Ant = o.r7es 019 @O 4 cr 0.00096 86197 Bg 5 | Se cosus MG 6 ca 0.00000 00715 Adding up the first three probabilities in the table shows that there isa better than 98% chance of losing your dollar. ‘The odds of winning ten dollars (matching three mambers) is 0.01765 = 1/56, so on average you spend 56 dollars to win 10 dollars. A last bit of Lotto 6-19 trivia: IF you play ties weck, every wedk fora thousand years, the chanenss are better than 99% that you nover, ever win the jackpot! ‘An unsolved Lotto 6-49 problem. One way to win Lotto G9 isto ny 13983 816 tickets: one cf each typo. OF case this erst $15 985 816 aud robebly fart worth it Suppse you'd settle for tn dla What's the small est mnber of Lotto G9 teksts you ned to buy to guaran ‘we matching at east 8 munbers? Ben with trays Super cemputers and advanced matlematics, the arsver i nobody ‘You can find out about the author at the following web site: nape /wwewestatalberta.ca/people/sclumay/deptapage daz ‘You can also send your comments directly to the author at schmu@stat-ualberta.ca BB mtn Jokes iF Uga club Mula over head once and Gaka club Mula twotimes, how many bumps does Mula have on head? Prehistoric Word Problems Two statisticians were traveling in an airplane fiom LA to [New York. About an hour into the fight, the pilot announces! that they bed lost an engine, but don't worry there are three lefts Honever, instead of 5 hours it would take 7 hows to get to New York. little hte, he amounced that second engine failed, and they still had two left, but it would tale 10 hous to get to New York, Samewhat later, the pibt again came on the intercom and announced that a third engine had dil, Never fear, he anounced, because the plane could fly on a single engine, Honexer, it would now take 18 homs to get to new York. “At this point, one statistician tumed to the other and said, “Gee, Fhope we dont lose that lat engine, or wel be up here forever!” (5. suse) {tis proven that the celcbration of birthdays is healthy. Stor tistics show that those pecple who celebrate the most birthdays Tecan the Oldest. (5 state Tae ty Connges) Emst Eduard Kummer (1810-1893), a German algebraist, ‘was rather poor at arithmetic, Whenever he hal oocsion 10 dd simple aitanetic in clas, he would got his students to help him, Once he lad to fin 79. “Seven times nine," he begs, “Seven times nine is vs vsvdh ood ++ seven times nine “Siat-one,” One student steed. Kummer wrote61 on the boa, “Sir,” said another student, at should be sizty-nine.” ‘Come on gentlemen, zt can’t be both,” Kummer exclaimed, “It must be one or the other.” DO NOT WORRY, THERE WILL” BE NO" ‘EASTER, THE MISSING PART IS 'y_0,000001% ‘My geametry teacher was sometimes acute, and semetines btuse, but always, he was rights ST do not feel obliged to believe that the same Go who has endoweel us with sense, roascn, and intellect has intended us 10 fovea their use.” catteo cats “It is a miracle that curity survives formal education. ‘A retired mathematician tock up gardening, and is now srowing carrots with square roots. (zea vt) “The retired mathemaficans howe was called aftermath, (orsn sume) Seer te lie Ila “Einstein was focing goon matter?” Einstein replied: ined” (tut seen) frend asked him, “What's the “My wife just doesn’t understand “How do I love thee? Let, me count. the ways!” by Laurent W. Marcoux Remember when you were young, and you fell in Jove for the first time? ‘There you were, double original burger combo in hand, wiping the mustard stains from your suetheart’s chin, when the object of your affections (hero after referred to as the OOYA) uttered the magic words “T kinda love you, T guess! ‘You immediately repli, Not to be outdone, the OOY. Jove you twiew as mmc.” Predictably; you responded “No, no, Hove you ten times as much as that.” (Editor's note: Could happen!) ‘Triumphantly, the OOYA slammad a fist on the table and exclaimed: “No way, [ love you infinity times more than that!” Oh oh, You started to sweat, Beads of perspiration forming on your brow were somewhat less than cool. How do you top that? What's bigger than infinity? A ner ois sine betrayed your anxiety, as your tecth chattered and an unoontrollable twitch set your whole body in break dance motion, Maybe youshoulin’t havesaid *Ok, let. me get back to you on this,” but who could blame you? What could you have done? countered with, “No, 1 Enter mathematics laughing, stage right. Of couse, you always knew math was great as a breake {ast supplement, but who would have thought that it could come to the mscue in your most desperate hour? (Ok, other than maybe Euler, Leibniz and WeierstraB.) Why is this? Well, becanse with the grecian formula of matho- matics gently massaging the grey regions of your cerebral cortex, you could say: “But which infinity do you mean? Countaity infinite?” OF course, you'd need to know that there was more than one infinity. And to know that, you'd need to know how to compare two different infinitiess And that, you'll remember, is why you came to me in the fist place, Alright then, Let's not be overambitions in our first steps into the great big world of infinite sets. Being Inumble, gentle souls, Jet's try to decide how to compare ‘hwo regular numbers, shall we? For instanoe, how do ‘we Know that 700 is bigger than 400? (Editor's note: 700 ds bigapr than 400, by the way:) A mathematician’ tools ar 10© their offbeat good looks # lozic Since your own good Jooks are what got you into this mes, lets try to appeal to logic to get you out. Let's suppose that you are at a dance, ‘There are Guys, there are Girls, there’s Alanis Morrisette blaring on the stereo, Not her CD, mind yon, the real Alanis Morrisette. Just your Inck, You're a Will Smith fan, and you're jigay with that. But we digress, ‘There are Guys, lots of them, ‘There are Girls, lots of them. ‘They're dancing around, and moving, and they're impossible to count, mostly be- cause you keep forgetting if you've counted these two EDF Jooking Guys standing in the comer. But maybe you want, to know if there are more Guys than Girls. What to do? What to do?’ I's time for one of those breathtalsing moments of math= ematical inspiration, Here it comes. It’s a gooe one. Wait, {or it! Ok, how about this? You start to pair them up. “That's it. C'est tout. Das ist alles, Exo es todo. Who'da thmk it? You tell each Girl to choose 1 (and ONLY 1) Guy to danoe with, If those two goofy Guys, or heck, if any other Guys are left debating the finer merits of Pepsi vs. Coke, there must have been more Guys than Girls. On the other hand, if there are still Girls standing; about tall ing about how the Atlanta Falcons blew it bigtime in the Superbowl, there must have been more Girls, Somehow, this is too simple, rrest-ce pas? But it works. In fact, it ‘works so well, We're going to milk the living Beare: out, of it. What we're going to do next is to steals. make that BORROW this idea to help us compare two infinite sets Consider the natural numbers N= {1,2,3, Being very considerate, consider also the even natural mumbers, E= {2,4,6,8,...}. Most of us would agree that thereare infinitely many elements in eachset. But which is Digger? To a mathematician, the trick is to take both sets toa dance, Indeed, we are mean, lean dancing machines. You may have noticed what snappy dressers we tend to be, Then again, maybe not. Sb, suppose we have infinitely many Guys, each wearing, a T-shirt with a natural mmnber on it. Snazzy, eh? No two Guys are alloned to have the same mumbex. Suppose wwe have infinitely many Girls, cach wearing a shirt with an even natural mumber on it. Sounds like a great party already, you're thinking? No two Girlsareallowed to have the same number, ‘The Question is: Is it possible to have every Guy dancing with exactly one Gitl, and every Gitl dancing with evactly one G with no Guys or Girls sitting alone by the coke machine! Here's one wa thom up Tike this: ‘Suppose, just suppose that we pair u Gene [i[2[s]ip sols [sys Gane [2falels|o lela bots Ofcourse, Guy La could switch partners. That ‘would still work. Noone asked you if there is only one way of pairing them up. Nope, The question was, is it possible to pair them up? BUT, you say, wait a second! What if we pair them up like THIS??? Gye [2]4]o]s) mo] [up mls Gite. [2pafels|o pep apops ‘Then, oh sure, all of the Girls are dancing, but there's lots of Guys left over!! Well, do I look particularly nervous to you? No. Is there a reason’? Yess [never asked if every pairing would work, I only asked if it is possible to find a pairing! This isi’t one of them, but we found one, in fact two, different pairings above, That's more than enough. For a mathematician, the fact that we can pair off all of the even munbers with all of the natural numbers means that the two sets, even though they are infinite, must be the same size, But this doesn’t sound too literate, so in- stead we impress the modia types by saying that th Nand E have the same cantinalty, We call the cardinal- ity of N (or of &, for that matter) ALEPH NOUGHT, and wwe write [N] = No. Unllss Pve bom lied to all of my life by my teachers and colleagues, 8 is the first letter of the Hobrow alphabet. Whenever we can pair up the elements; of a set X with N Tike we just did with I, we say that 1s denumerable or countatie? That is because we can use “count” the elements of X Still with me? the integer, Z How big is Z?- Here we g again. Fl pair them up this way: Gay Ne, GuINe. 3 1 aps [oe 3 2Tsts Hopefully you'll agree that each Girl has one Guy, each Gury has one Girl, and everyone is happily dancing to the Best of Billy Idol (ask your grandpa who he we We've just seen that Z is countable. It has cardin Odoh, ooooh, P've got one! ‘The rationals, QU Q is just the set of all fractions, so e={2: naez azo}. “iginicaly, anufable means either deruerable or finite‘There are infinitely many rationals between each pair of integers, right? For example, between 1 and 2 you have hold on...oh yeah, you have: $, 4.4, 8.4, etc. ‘Again: betwoen two SINGLE intogers, there are INF NITELY MANY rationals! Certainly Pm not going to tell yout that Q and NV are the same size! Well, to make a long, Story short, yes Tam! So, Tve got to gp dancing again, This time, as you night immagine, choosing the pairs is more delicate (Like, raybe its a slow dance and certain Girls prefer certain Guys or something, Him, maybe not.) Here's how PUL write out the combinations this time, PU write them as ordered pains: the fist coordinate of my orderex pair will be the “Guy Number” (the Guys are playing, the role of Nin this scenario), and the second coordinate is the “Girl Numibor" (the Girls are playing the le of Q, and doing a fine job of it, T might axld). So, for example, the ordered pair (14,3) means that Guy 14 is dancing with Girl §. Keeping this in mind, here is my pairing: ) a3. 02d) el By drawing a line from Guy 1 to Guy 2 to Guy 3 to Guy 4 and so on, you should be able to see the pattern for choosing pairs, OF course, it's harder than before, but it is still “doablo" (that’s a word, isw't it2), and after all, the rationals are a pretty complicated! set of munerss So, Qs countable. Every natural number is dancing with, sore rational and vice-versa, and no one is left over. Hmm. One thing you may have noticed, if you are ro ally perspicacions (and there are treatments for this nowa- days). You may’ have noticed that the rational number 3 is the same as the rational number 4, or 4, or 4 for that matter. Inother words, Girl is dancing with Guys2, 10, Mand a whole lot more! That’s a technicality we can get around by simply not writing down “3” if it already comes up before as “4.” Similarly, we wouldn't write down “4.” or “SH.” T would have done that, honest, but the list gots ily to write. OF eouse, you might be tempted to conclude that jor, there must be more Guys that Girls, Since every Girl i dancing, and in fact, the Girls even have more than one partner, although each Guys are only dancing with a single Girl! ‘There are people who worry about these things, Some of them come up with ideas, Good ideas. So good, in fact, wwe cal these ideas “Theorems,” Her is a Theorem due to ‘two Guys called Schréider and Bernstein, They should not be confused with the piano-playing kid in the Peanuts comic strip and the former orchestra conductor, although it is tempting to do so. Here is one way of interproting their ‘Theorem—probably a way they never thought of Schriider-Bernstein Suppose you have a bunch of Guys and a bunch of Girls together in this HUGE room. We won't even pretend to say what we mean by a “bunch.” ‘Ok, suppose you are able to find some way of getting every Girl to dance with one, or even more than one Guu. Maybe some Guys aren't even dancing at this point. Maybe they're eating potato chips and drinking carrot juice, nec- tar of the gods of rubbits, Suppose that in the NEXT song, you find a NEW way of getting every Guy to dance with one, or even more than one Gitk, This time, maybe some Girls are hattang the taco bar, ‘Then we, Mssrs, Sdurbiter and Bernstem, GUARAN- TEE (and trust us, we're doctors) you that there is some THIRD way of pairing them up in the third dance so that each Guy has one Girl, each Girl has one Guy, and EVERYONE is dancing ‘This is truly marvelous, Why? ‘Think about it. When wwe had the natural numbers dancing with the rationals, each Girl had (at least one) partner. By Schrtkler= Bernstein, we're half way there, If in the seoond song, we pair up Guy 1 with Girl 1, Guy 2 with Girl 2, ete. then every Guy is dancing, That's the other half. Although these gentlemen refise to tell us how to do it, they never- theless GUARANTEED that there is some way of pairing them up so that EVERYONE is dancing with exactly one partner. ‘That means that Q is countable, Coole Let's review a bit. ‘The infinite sets N, 1 Z and Q are all countable. “They are all “the same siz” This isn’t, helping. Your love life is at stake, the OOYA has just told oll they Jove you infinitely many times more than you love them, and it seems as though infinity, while it can SFr the technically inlined, I agree that replacing injections by ssuypetions may involve using the Axiam of Choioa Lilo yer've never used the Azcom of Choice in your lies! Like, maybe every vector syace Tia a bassy and yo didir’t use the Axion of Choice to pene it. Soy for the digyesiem. In fact Pe just been infor] Iya Zomnelo-Fraenkel-wise fried of mine (thanks Ress) that in 1669, it was still an open question whether cr not this version of the Slutkier-Bernsein Theorem was erivalent tothe Axjom of Choice Anyhow, sine ts common practice to use the Axia of Choice (or cnc ele fommations 1 da een er why Tene itup). 12‘wear lots of different disguises, can only be found in the “one size fits all” bin at your local department store. Here's the advieo you've been waiting for. Dont call Sue Johansen. Just tell the OOYA: “But I Really love you.” ‘This is going to melt the OOYAVs heart. ‘The reason? Remember that the real numbers are just the numbers ‘we can write as infinite decimals. Yea, there are lots of these, Every natural number can be written as a decimal, for instance 4 = 4.000... You may already know that every rational mmber (ie. every fraction) can be written asa decimal witha repeating term at the end: for example 1/7 = .M2S57142857142857.... But there are others lke 141592653... that aro still real numbers, but can't bevwritten asa fraction no matter how hard you try. They are real nuunbers, butt they are not rational, We call Sem, are you ready? ..imational numbers, (Well, what on earth would you have called them?) Let us write B for real munbers. Nifty notation, eli? How big is B? Infinite? Sure, it contains N, and N is infinite, Same size as N? Let's think. Hmmm, not s» obvious. .not obvious that it’s not, either .. hmmm ...er ...th «--hmmmm ... Fear not. We can do this. The idea is cool. Real enol. T shouldn't even be shoving you something sp cool at your age, but [can't help mys T's weird though, atleast the first time you soe something lke this, Real weird. That's ‘what makes it so enol. Watch. We're gping to sor that there are so many neal numbers even between Oand 1 (and we'll et the Girls weara T-shirt ‘with a real mmibor between 0 and 1 on the back) that no ratter how we try to pair up the Guys (each wearing a T= shirt with a natural number on it) with the Girls, there always be some Git] who's not dancing. How? Here goos: Suppose Pm wrong, That is, suppase one can find a Guy {or each Girl Let's chods ont the pairing (its good to be nosy when you're in math). First, le’s try an example to get a feeling for what's going to go wrong. GuyNo Girl No. 1 231678. 2 L632, 3 .OISI75, 4.011364, I claim that some Gi Here's how Pll find hers Look at Guy L. The first digit of his partner's number is 2. Tl pick 8. Lookat Guy2. The second digit of his partner's number is 1. Tl pide 8. Look at Guy 3. The third digit of his partner’s number is 8 Il pick 4. Which Gi is not dancing, Look at Guy 4. The fourth digit of his partner's nuniber is & Pllpick 8. And so on. Look at Guy ky Ifthe f digit of his partner’s number is 8, Pll pick 4, Otherwise, TI] always pids 8 In this case, my choice is 8848. ‘You might say: “how do you know she's not further down the list?” Go ahead and say it. PU answer: She's not Guy's partner. Her first digit is wrong, She's not Guy 2's partner, her second digit is wrong. She's not Guy 3's partner, her third digit is wrong. ‘You might say: “Ok, Pll just add her to my list.” Go ahead and say it. PIL use the same trick to find a NEW Girl who's not dancing, ‘The point is not that there is a single Girl who never dances, but rather that no matter hove you try to pair them up, in any given dance, at least one Girl is warming the bench, Ok, That works great for this example, but we really ‘want to know that it will work for any pairing, not just rearrangement of this particular one, We'll start with an arbitrary list Guy No. Girl No, 1 anapagau 2 1 439 023024 « 3 sagrapagsags « 4 01 Qa 44 «6 Here, ayy refers to the j digit in the number on the bad of the T-shirt for the Girl dancing with the #* Gu (T hope you got that, Think about it for a while if you have to. Its worth the effort.) Like the great Victor von Frankenstein before me, PL build my lonely Girl as follow Taye =8, PU choose a mmber by =4. Tay. £8, Tl choose =8 ‘The Girl who's not dancing is the Girl wearing the num- bet Jubabyba...on her Tshirt, The argument is the same as before. She's not Guy 1's partner, Her first digit is wrong. She's not Guy 2's partner, her socond digit is wrong. She's not Guy 3's partner, her third digit is wrong, ete, She's NOT DANCING!! (Who would dance with a Girl with so many wrong cits?) So, no matter how hard we try, we can never get all of| the Girls to danco, because there are just foo many Girt . Lots more, Infinitely many more! The Guys are surrounded! ‘The moral of the story is (as if a stony like this deserves a moral), the cardinality of Bis grenfer than the card nality of Ne We say that IR is uncounfable. What is the 13cardinality of R? Who knows? It is big, We sometimes call it e. What we do know is that there are as many’ real rmumnbersas there are subsets of the natural numbers. This sa bnge set. But we don't know if there is any infinite cardinal between the size of Nand That would rue. But this is still just what we neaded, We have now shown that there is more than one infinity.” (In fact, there are infinitely many, but well leave this to another time with another OOYA.) For the time being, when the OOYA sayss “I Jove you infinitely many times more than that,” just smile and Say: “Oh, you just love me a countable munker of times more than that. My love is Real, ¢? About the author. No ene ever iwites him to dances and he has no idea why. 18 not like he tallss about this stuff in public or anything. Ok, like, maybe a little. But only if somecne aks him, like you did. P've got to face it. He just lives vicariously though cardinal mumbers You can send hin an Femail at: L.MarcouQualberta.ca . Check out his web age at: Ittpy//wwanath.valberta.ca/~Tmancens marcas. eal BBvath Jokes ‘Weiner was in fact very absent minded, ‘The following story is told about him: When they meved fram Cambridge to New tom his wift, Inowing that he would be absolutely useless on the moxe, peckod him off to MIT while she directed the more, Sinoe she was certain tet he would forget tat they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote dow the new ade does on a picoe of paper, and gave it to him Naturally in the ‘coms of the day, an insight occured to him He reached in his podat, found a piece of paper on which he furiously serbbed some notes, thought it over, decided there was. fallacy in his ‘den, and thew the piece of paper aways At the end of the day hie went home (to the old aeklness in Cambridge, of couse). ‘When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had! moved to, and that the piece of paper with the ackiness was long gone. Fortimately inspiration struds. ‘There was a young girl on the strect ane! he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saving, "Excuse me, pothaps you know me, Tim Norbert Weiner and we've just moved, Would you know where we've moved to?” To which the young rl plied, "Yes daddy, memnyy thought you would forget ‘The capper to the story is that [aslo his chuughter (the girl in the story) about the truth of the story, many years later, She said that it wasn’t quite true— that he never forzot who his chikinen were! “The rest of it, however, was pretty clese to ‘whet actually happens will never forget the day in statistics when, the Profesor, ‘who had all of the tuaditional looks of one (white hair, tweed Jacket with leather elbow patches) was writing; on the board Xz Yj; when one of the students asked, “Don’t you mean Xj Yi?" The Prof looked at the bow a bit, then erased the auiss with his sleeve, and sid; “Yes you are correct. Quite often I will say one thing, write another, and be thinking a ani What Iam thinking %s correct, and you will te tested fon.” Eyory jaw in the classroom hit the floot! (2.x) (vpyright 2000 by Sktney Hares A researcher tried jalapenos on a stomach of an leer patient, and the uloer went away. The researcher pub- lished an article “Jalapenos Cure Stomach Ulors.” ‘The next patient subjected to the same treatment died. The researcher published a. followtup article “More Detailed Stuly Reveals That Jalapenos Cure 50% Of Stomach Uk ‘Dome nee hs wan wr ot planing to got colege?™ (©Corient 2000 ta Sky Hares uSimilarity and Dimensionality Mark Solomonovich I. Real life problems ‘Tt would not surprise anyone that mathematical meth ods are applied! in such areasas physics and electrical eng neering, Quite unexpectedly, mathematical methods can sometimes provide a solution to a problem in an area that does not seem to allow a rigorous formulation, The following problems, in spite of non-rigorous forrm- lations, do allow rigorous solutions and qualitative sub- stantiation based on certain mathematical ideas called Similarity and Dimensionality ‘Try to solve these problems. If you cannot propose a vwolksubstantiated solution, read the article and then try again or check out the solutions at the end of this article. Problem 1: A blue whale and a fin whale have ak. mest the same lengths, 30 meters and 25 meters, re spectively; for the largest representatives of the species. How would you explain that a fin whale weighs just half of the weight of a blue whale? Problem 2: If you look in a supermarket at the price per pound of small and large grapelzuits of the same Kind, you will see that the large ones cost more per pound. Why do you think this is the case? Problem 3: A camel can carry approximately the same ‘weight as a mnle and move with the same spend, Which pack animal is able to travel farther without water? Problem 4: How does the height of jump of an animal depend on its size?” % IL. Similarity in a one-dimensional world. ‘The first question is: who are these creatures that in- habit the line? These are segments, finite parts of straight lines. -o-———2 ++ __ ++ (One can say that any two segments are similar to each other. Really, they diffor only in their lengths, and their shape is the same. ‘That corresponds to our common sense notion of similarity. ‘Thus, our first experience with similarity can be sum marized as follows: Two objects are. similar if one of them oan be transformed into another by means of an expan sion, contraction, or reflection. For segments of lengths $1 and S3 one can find such a coefficient ve that Sis Ks Sx For instance: oe —=—— St Figure 1 ‘This coefficient, 4, is called the magnification or similarity ition IIL. Similarity in a two-dimensional world. ‘There are infinitely many different kinds of objects lying, in the plane, AARA Figure 2(2) — = Ss— | i oe Figure 2(b) ~ S C 00 CO UO Figure 2 (©) IO eC ~ Figure 2(d) OOF) Figure 2(e) L, qi i aS "Wi 4 ts Figure 2(f) Lot us examine passible criteria for similarity based on the above examples and using our common sense. (@) Notall triangles are similar; yet some of them are (for example two equilateral triangles). (b) Two rectangles are seldom similar, but two squares are similar and two rectangles with the same ratio between their sides are similar (©) Alleiteles look simila (a) Two ovals (clipses) are not simil the ratios of their dimensions (length divided by width) are the same, (©) Polygons with the same mmber of sides are not ust ally similar. Yot, regular polygons with the same imunber of sides are similar, (8) Dogs are not similar to each other. small and big, look similar. ct, two terriers, It is clear that symmetric objects of the same kind, such as equilateral triangles, or circles, or regular hexagons, are similar to each other. What about non-symmetric objects? shape (og tw0 terviers) but ‘the same face on various s (Fue 3). e photo portraits looks similar © It would be probably a good idea to describe similar ‘two-dimensional figures obtained from one another by a transformation similar to photo enlargement. Figure 4 illustrates in a simplified manner, how a photo enlanger works. Each elementary component of the picture grows proportionally, evenly in all directions. Figure 3 What about the most elementary components of any figure? Each segment of the langer picture is obtained from. the corresponding segment of the smaller picture by means of an enlargement, and the magnitude of the enlargement js the same for all seements lying in the picture. We can formalize this “definition” to make it more rig orous: We say the figure F is similar to figure F with ratio if F can be transformed onto £7 in such a way that for any pair of points P and M of figure F and their images Pf and M! we have PM! = +P! Eu Since 1 is the sane for any choice of points P and M, where P” and JM’ are their corresponding images, in order to determine the ration x for two simular figures it is sufficient to consider just two such points, which can be chosen according to a certain rule. For example, in the case of a triangle we could consider two of its vertices or the endpoints of the height, and in the case of a circle Just the endpoints of it can think about the length L of the segment PM as a characteristic finear size of F that can be compared with the corresponding linear size L’ of an other similar figure F”. Figure 4 [Note that after the enlarged photo is obtained, one canmove the two pictures and the pictures will stil S\7 Figure 5 ‘So, a similarity with magnification factor x has the fol owing properties (see Figure 5): (1) transforms segments of length Zin segments of length wel; (2) preserves anele (3) transforms triangle with sides a, b, ¢ and angles A, cs rae a ca ane angles A, B, Cs (4) transforms a figure with area S'ontoa figure with area, Ras. Lot us prove the last property (4). “A JN Figure 6 start with trian ch = Farsi = 128, For polygons: we decomp them into similar triangles sg! Lag + Say bose t Say = 28a, FRSA toe HHS, =H N ¢ Figure 7, in ures miple words, Property (4) savs that for similar fige Te era offre is proprio to squ of its near s In particular, this statement means that for all similar figumes the ratio 5/12, where S'is the area ofa figure and L its characteristic linear sizo, is always the same. We can also say that for similar figures the area is growing proportionally to their Iinear size This fact can be explained more precisely, The area of a ‘igure is proportional to L?, where L is a (duaructeristic) linear size of the figure. That iss S! = 2S, where = L/L. This means that Ss SH CPB. As the ratio S/L? is the same for all similar figures, we observe that the area S! is proportional to (LI. We will turite S! x (L!)2 to say that 5° is proportional to (L!, tue, te factor S!/(L!)? as the same for all sanular figures For example, if there are two similar rectangles, one with side of length L, the other with side of length L’, then the tation of their areas S to S’ is 5-(8) Question for discussion: All circles are similar to each other, Then, can we assert, basing on the above stated corollary, the existence of the universal! number a such that Scirele mR? IV. Similarity in a three-dimensional world One can define similar solids by means of siniitarity transformations Let us point out a property analogous to the property’ (4) of the previons section: The volumes of similar figures are in the same propor= tion as the cubes of their corresponding linear sizes. In other words: Vad Now you are ready to attempt solving the applied prob Jems in the beginning of the article, Problem 1. ‘The ratio of the linear sizes of the two whales is approximately 0.8, therefore the ratio of their volumes and, hence, their weights is (0.8)? = 0.5. universal means the same forall circles. 7Problem 2. The mass of a grapefruit is proportional to its radius cubed, whereas the amount of waste, the volume of the skin, is proportional to its radius squared. Gf we assume that the thickness of the skin is constant). ‘Therefore, the ratio of useful volume to total volume of the fruit is proportional to its radius. Problem 3, Let L be characteristic linear size of the animal, The amount of water that the animal can store is proportional to Z. Evaporation of water is proportional to the surface area of the animal, ie. to 12, Henoe, the maximum time an animal keeps water is proportional to L, ie. the bigger animal (the camel) can move longer without drinking. Problem 4. Let L denote a characteristic linear size (c.g. height or length of a leg) of an animal. The enengy :mqhires| to jump to height #7 is proportional to the height Hand to the mass of the animal, ie. E oc L3H. The plysical work done by the animal's imascles is equal to F'Ly where F, the strength of the muscles, is proportional to £2 (the greater the area of the cross-section of a muscle, the more fibers it contains). ‘Therefore, the pliysical work is proportional to [2+ = L°, Energy’ balance then requires that BH xD. “Tins Hf does not depend on L.. (Observations shows that a jerboa and a kangaroo can jump to the same height.) BB mtn Jokes ‘A mathematician is showing a new prodf he came up with to a hue gapup of peers After he's gone through most of it, one of the mathematicians sys, “Wait! ‘That's not true. [have a counter-example?” He replies, “That's day. I have two proc.” WHAT DO YOU MEAN PLES| ‘ARE SQUARE? EVERYONE KNOWS PLES ARE ROUND! A somewhat xlvanced society has figured how to peckage asic knowledge in pill form, A student, needling same Karning, goes to the pharmecy and sess What kitdof knowlege pilkare available. The pharmacist says “Here's a pil for English literature.” ‘The student tals the pill and swallows it and has new knowlalge about English Iiterature! “What else do yo have?” «asks the student. “Well, I have pills for art history biolomy, and world hise tory,” replies the pharmacist. ‘The student asks for these, and swallows them and is new Jnowledge about thore subjects Then the stunt asks, “Do you have a pill for math?” ‘The pharmacist says “Wait jut a moment”, and apes beck into the storeroom and brings back a whepper of a pill and plunks it en the counter. 1 have to tabe that huge pill for math?" = inquires the student. The plamnacist replied “Well, you know math abways wus a little hard to swallou,” “Scionoe is built upon facts, asa house is bull of stones bat ‘an accumulation of facts is no mere a science that a heap of stones is a house.” ver: pocran? ‘Albert Einstein, who fanciod himself as a violinist, was m= earsing a Haydn string quewtet. When he failed for the fourth, time to get his entry in the second movement, the cellist looked upand said, “The problem with you, Albert, isthat yousimply cart count, ‘A guy decided to eo to the brain tramsplant clinic to ne ‘reshon his supply of brains. ‘The socretary informod him that, they had thice kines of brains available at that time, Doctors? Drains were going for $20 per ounce and lawyers’ brains were epiting $90 per ounce. And then there were mathematicians’ Drains, which were currently fetching $1000 per ounce. 1000 dollasan ouncef” he cxied, “Why are they so expene “It tales more mathematicians to get an ounce of brains,” she explained.The Box Principle Dragos Hrimiuc ‘There are different versions of the Box Principle (or Pi. geonhole Principle). Essentially it says: Jen-+1 balls are distributed tn n baves then at leust one bar has more than one ball. We can reformulate this principle into a slightly more general form: Ufmn +1 balls are distributed inn bares, then at least cone bar has more than m balls ‘This elementary principle, usod first ly Dirichlet (1805- 1859) in number theory, has a lot of unexpected and nice applications. It is easy to romenize if the Box Prindple has to be applied when we sokw a problem, The hard point is to identify the boxes and the balls Now, let's give some examples to illustrate how this principle can be used. First we begin with a list of simple «questions without solutions: 1A tag contains beads of five colors. What is the smallest number of beads that amst be drawn from the bag without looking, to get two of the same color? 2. Show that among 37 persons there are at least four born in one month, 3. Show that among 78 persons; there are at least twelve born on the ssune day of the work. 4, How many persons are needed to be sure that we have ten with the sae birthday? Let us now solve some typical questions by using the Box Principle. In this way you will be fam with the method and this will be useful for solving fiture problems. Problem 1 Prove that in any group of five people there are two who have an identical munber of friends within the group: put that person in box 0, ifhe has | friend put that person in box Land so on, Remark that the box 0 and 4 cannot be simmltaneously cemupied. ‘Thus we have 5 persons and at most 4 occupied boxes. ‘Therefore in at least: one box: there are two persons. Problem 2 Given 2000 integers show that two of them can be cho- sin such that their difference is divisible by 1999, Solution: When we divide a number by 1999 then the remain der can be 0, +1908. Take 1999 boxes: munbered O,1,.4+1998 Pie up a number from these 2000 and die vide it Ly 1999, If the remainder is 7 put it in the box 4, Since we have 2000 numbers and only 1999 boxes at east one box contains two numbers. Thus we get at least two numbers that provide the same remainder if we divide them by 1999, Then the difference of these two nunbers is divisible by 1999, Problem 3 Let ai, in be n integers, Prove that we can choose a subset of these numbers such that their sum is divisible by n. Solution: We consider th following integers: SSA = M1 F200, Su =O ba2 +e One IE any of these integers is divisible by n, then the proof is done. Otherwise, if we divide these integers by n the remainders can be 1,2,..4.1— 1. “Take r boxes labeled from 1 to n— 1, Now divi 1 for cach +n find the remainder, then put sp in the box 1. Since there are only boxes and re numbers, at least two of the sums, sq with p 0. ‘The last inequality is satisfied if and only if m © (-v2,v2). Consequently, bu 6) ‘has two different so- Intions if and only if m € (=V2,v2) and m 4 =L. (If m= =I, Ea (5) is just a linear equation.) ‘The two cif ferent roots are 1-vIaF mrt Itis clear that the value 1+y2—77 alway vill be positive if m-+1 is also positive, is = 42 = 4(2= m?) L+vI=aF " m+ s positive, so.12 ifm >=. On a the other hand, for «1 to be positive, it is necessary that 1=v2—=ne > 0. That means the following inequality must be satisfied 2am <1, som < =L orm > 1, That means, that Eq. (5) will have two different positive roots sry and cra if and only if m & (1,v2). Since wry < a2 it is sufficient to solve the inocuality Ly vi=ie ™ ‘The incality (6) is equivalent to Va By taking square of the last inequality we obtain, © <2m+1. 5m? 44m —1= (Gm—1)(m-+1) >0, which implies that m > 1/5 or m <—l. Therefore for mE (L,V2) Bq, (5) will have two different roots belonging to the interval (0,2). otic tat beth of the abve probkens invoke solving quadratic ee Seen This willbe the topic ofa fut artic ivan upcening Boot of SS5 ike'sye wees (2p by Beis Gases BB math Jokes "But we just don't have the rechcley to carry it out ©Cepyrieht 2000 by Sidney Hares"There wos this statistics student who, when driving his car, ‘would always accelerate lial before coming to an intersection, whiz straight over i, then slow down again ence he was beyond it, One day, he took along a pessenge, who wos understand ably urmerved by his divine style andl asked him why he went so fast over intersecticns. ‘The statistics student repli, “Well, Satistically speaking, you are far more lhely to have an acci= dont at an intersection, so I just make sure that I spend less time there.” ‘There are three kinds of people in the world: thove who can, cout and those who caM't. (Rikon rw) In modern mathematics, algebra has became so important ‘that munbers will soan only lave syimbolic meaning. (Pee perstace) God is pert, why did He create discontinuous fnctions? ‘And God said “Let there be numbers”, and there were man ers Odd and even created he them, and he said unto them be fitful and multiply; and le commanded thom to keep the laws of incluction. (ease) ‘Math ‘Teacher: Now suppose the number of sheep i Stent: Yes sir, but what happens ifthe number of sheep is n0t.2? (ew seca) ‘Theorem: $1 = le, Proof: To give you a sense of money disappearing, . s1 (Gein & Tay) ‘Theorem: $1= 10 cons Proof: We know that ‘$1= 100 cents. Divide both sites by 100 1 _ 100 Stan = To os Tins 1 sp Loent. “Take the square root of both sikes x mo = VT cent. “Thereire, we get 1 0 Multiply both sides by 10 ‘$1 = 10 cents. oo) oe Math Challenges We haveselected several problems of various types and ‘would like to invite everybody to try to solve them, Some Of thes» problems are quite easy, others are more difficult Please send your solutions to: in the Sky~ Math Challenges Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences 501 Central Academic Building University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta ToC 2G1 We will publish the most interesting solutions of these problems and for some selected problems there will be book prizes. Problem 1: solve the equation Ter FI —2 (VIG FT) Problem 2: A man has 15878 ecuilateral triangular pieces of mosaic, all of side length one cnt, He constructs the Iangest passible mosaic in the shape of an equilateral triangle, (a) What is the side length of the mosaic? (b) How many picoes will he have left over? Problem 3: From 12cm x 18cm sheet of tin, we wish to make a box by cutting a semare from each corner and turning up the sides, Determine the size of the square that yields the largest box. Problem 4: Froma point P on the circumference of a circle, a distance PT of 10 meters is laid ont along th tangent. ‘The shortest distance from T to the circle is 5 rcters. A straight line is drawn through T cutting, the circle at X’and Y. The length of TX is 15/2 meters. (a) Determine the radius of the cir (b) Determine the length of XY. Problem 5: Some playing cards from an ord rrangesl in a row To the right of some King is cone Queen, To the left of some Quoen is at east on Queen. To the left of some Heart isa least one Spade. To the right of some Spade is at: east one other Spade. Find the minimnm number of cards in this row. 2Problem 6: Suppose that your height this year is 10% ore than it was last year, and last year your height was 29% more than it was the year before. By what porentage has your height inereasnd during he last two years? Problem 7: A gambler starts with $1, The prob- ability that he will win $1 on each bet is 1/2 and the. probability that he loses $1 is 1/2. {@) Ifthe gambler can draw on an infinite credit, what is the probability P(r) that he will have 2 dollars after n bets? (b) Suppose now that the bank won’t give the gambler any clit, s9 that he must stop playing when his balanoe reaches zero, What is the probability that he is able to continue playing after n bets? Problem 8: A 10x10 chessboard is divided into eigh- teen rectangles along the grid lines. The area of each rec- tangle is written in one of the squares inside it, The dia~ gram below shows the areas but not the rectangles, with Ostanding for 10, Reoonstruct the rectangles, Problem 9: Each square of 99 chessboard is painted in one of six colours R=ral, O=oranee, Y=vellow, Geren, B=blne and V=violet. All squames of the same colour are connected oxge to agp. ‘The diagram below shows the colours of some of the sqquares- Reconstruct the colours of the other squires. Problem 10: An8x® chessboard is the map of twenty one islands on a lake, Bach island is the size of one square, There are bridges connecting pairs of islands. AUl bridges, are parallel to the grid line, and no two bridges intersect. There may be multiple bridges betwoen the sae pair of i lands, ‘The munber of bridges to each island is rocorded on the squuarerepresenting it, ‘The diagram below shows these numbers but not the bridges, Reconstruct the bridges. 4 5 4 2 2 4 3 2 1 3 5 4 1 2 4 3 3 3 3 i [Secnyig ty re GameA muuber of my grade 9 students anda Sew grade 8's looked at the mazazine. ‘The higher achieving students definitely were nore interested in it. ‘They liked the puzdes especially and thought that more puzleszand math genes should be included. Few were impressed with the articles» perhaps a litle beyand them? I thought they were great. A suggestion for future a= ticles - feature someone whose career involves the use of math, and have them explain how the ability to do and understand ‘math has benefitted them in their carcer, If they could draw parallels to what they are doing and what is being taught in (cur curriculum, that would be a Lomus. Wendy Ricards Jn future isoues of x sn the Sky we plan to publish more material rete tothe present fagh school curr inchde prolern soy tedinoques. There willbe also some articles about carters for student spectazing mt mathematics. = Editors aes Albert High School Mathematics Competition ANNOUNCEMENT High Seton Stadt in Aer aa the North Wiest ee tories are invited to try the Alberta High School Mathematies Competition, ‘This is a two part in school campetition that tales: place om the following; dates: Part I ‘Thuncay, November 21, 2000 Part UH: | Werinesday, Februuy 7, 2001. Substantial prizes are awarded. For mare details visit: attp://wav.nath.walbarta.ca/~ahsnc or send Gmail to tevistnath.ualberta.ca. Encyclopedia of Mathematics Wo Bly remade Concine Brie Weitin's Bacon eloped oF Mathematics’ tg ce be Miagat at the abe vps fame wal race tis a wonkkeful rescence of nformaticny inctuting interactive 3D raphe ‘Torus Games We fave found an extrcniinary colton of gars (Tie TaceT, gas, Crassvomiy Wort tardy diss Chess) on the tongs and the ‘on beets You can ak fn an splamtion of wat Gacy 8a tans gpa Ua Kits th Te es re rl co so 9 ak ‘Images of Famous Mathematical Works “This sa collction of maga tite pages pags frm seme aris rnathemnatieal Worl Go to the aki ‘rep: //rcan, up.” gweue stay Sagea/ mage. ‘History of Mathematics “The wob archive doweat wo the History of Mathematis atthe Seiad ‘of Mathematics, Tiny Colle, Dublin Check ou this acres api event, solvent) ‘Mathematics Archives "This web site, contains a MSDOS Software Collection far K=12 (Freeware, Sharsvare, Conmnarcal Seftyare tad Deno of Cortical fare). leat a ‘nep!/ aches atthe at are/sa i 12/ Earliest Use of Mathematical Terms "These pages atuampt to shove tho fist uses of various words usa i rmathraties This we ste ated at ep:/fuater aol.car/jetcsrijestanrd.ieai is manana! by kt Miles, a teacier a Gall High School in New Port Tey Peri ‘Mathematically Correct “This web ste is dete to the ccecems rae By pares and ‘austs abou tho invaon of US seheok Uy ue Newt Math anu the bend i rstore tae lls torah cients, Teng beet great ere fir both tncher anal stents. Look at erp? /fourrla.caspuoarve,com/hensfopss /satiana/ CybeMath Py with various pmmotrical figures at lnep!/feeeaaplesat con barat Sages ba Alberta High School Mathematics Competition A twonpart math campotitin tales plao in November and February fof cach soe year, with bock prizes fr tho fis far an ca pace fal scholarships forthe seen! part Fld mare about tis ception ep:/ frets smtnartace/“abc/ ‘New Chronology of the World History ‘The arceptad treitional donccay of guint ana ecb world is incor The or thematic! aa static Insp: / fans. erg er ae