I’m taking a one-day break from my usual posts on mathematics and mathematics education to note a symbolic milestone: yesterday, meangreenmath.com surpassed 10,000 total page views since its inception last June. Many thanks to the followers of this blog, and I hope that you’ll continue to find this blog to be a useful resource to you.

Here are my 12 most viewed posts so far, in chronological order by category.

Square roots and logarithms without a calculator:

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/08/03/square-roots-without-a-calculator-part-3/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/08/06/square-roots-without-a-calculator-part-6/

Ideas for engaging students, from Teach North Texas students studying to become secondary mathematics teachers:

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/08/14/engaging-students-distinguishing-between-inductive-and-deductive-reasoning/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/09/06/engaging-students-deriving-the-pythagorean-theorem/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/10/16/engaging-students-laws-of-exponents/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/10/18/engaging-students-solving-linear-systems-of-equations-by-either-substitution-or-graphing/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/10/23/engaging-students-distinguishing-between-axioms-postulates-theorems-and-corollaries/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/10/29/engaging-students-computing-trigonometric-functions-using-a-unit-circle/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/11/06/engaging-students-right-triangle-trigonometry/

Other:

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/06/26/geometrical-magic-trick/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/08/15/full-lesson-plan-magic-squares-2/

https://meangreenmath.com/2013/10/27/all-i-want-to-be-is-a-high-school-math-teacher-why-do-i-have-to-take-real-analysis/

This is an interesting book review that I just read:

This small paperback book is directed at U.S. undergraduate students who may be wondering how to get along in, or even survive, a mathematics major…

The full review can be found at http://digitaleditions.walsworthprintgroup.com/publication/?i=187509&p=38.

Courtesy of the Klein Four, who were a group of mathematics graduate students at Northwestern about ten years ago.

My colleague Jason Ermer at Collaborative Mathematics has just published Challenge 08 on his website:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tES0NYD7Om8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tES0NYD7Om8

I’m taking a one-day break from my usual math-education posts. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

From a recent article that appeared in the BBC:

The year 1913 marked the beginning of an extraordinary relationship between an impoverished Indian clerk and a Cambridge don. A century later, their remarkable friendship has left its mark in the strangest of places, namely in Futurama, the animated series from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening and physics graduate David X Cohen…

For example, in order to pay homage to Ramanujan, Keeler has repeatedly inserted 1,729 into Futurama, because this particular number cropped up in a famous conversation between Hardy and Ramanujan.

According to Hardy, he visited Ramanujan in a nursing home in 1918: “I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one and that I hoped it was not an unfavourable omen. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.’ “…

It is in recognition of Ramanujan’s comment that Bender, Futurama’s cantankerous robot, has the unit number 1729.

The number also appears in an episode titled “The Farnsworth Parabox”. The plot involves Futurama characters hopping between multiple universes, and one of them is labelled “Universe 1729”.

Moreover, the starship Nimbus has the hull registration number BP-1729.

A great discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in the solution of any problem. Your problem may be modest: but if it challenges your curiosity and brings into play your inventive faculties, and if you solve it by your own means, you may experience the tension and enjoy the triumph of discovery. Such experiences at a susceptible age may create a taste for mental work and leave their imprint on mind and character for a lifetime.

Thus, a teacher of mathematics has a great opportunity. If he fills his allotted time with drilling his students in routine operations he kills their interest, hampers their intellectual development, and misuses his opportunity. But if he challenges the curiosity of his students by setting them problems proportionate to their knowledge, and helps them to solve their problems with stimulating questions, he may give them a taste for, and some means of, independent thinking.

– George Pólya, from How To Solve It

For the 2013 football season, the Georgia Tech marching band has a new halftime show called “Math.” Enjoy.