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Math Jokes and Archimedes

Mathematics is made of 40 percent formulas, 40 percent proofs
and 40 percent imagination.

i to : Be rational.
to i: Get real.

There are 10 kinds of mathematitians in the world..... Those who

understand Binary, and those who don't.

In math you don't understand things, you just get used to them!

True story:
A student walked into his discreet math class late and in order

not to interrupt he put his late slip on the teacher's desk

furtively without the teacher noticing. The teacher noticed the
slip on his desk afterwards. He commented "I see you put this
slip on my desk without me noticing. I guess that's why they call
this class discrete mathematics."

It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered

recently is four times bigger then the previous record.

What is the shortest mathematicians joke?

Let epsilon be smaller than zero.

The emperor's horse is about to participate in the international

race in three months. The emperor summons his best
nutritionist, best trainer, and best mathematician, and orders
them to prepare the horse for the race. A week before the race,
the emperor demands a report on their progress.
The nutritionist says, "I have fed it the most excellent mixture
of herbs and cereals, it will give it speed and courage."
The trainer says, "I trained it to skip any obstacle, and take
turns without slowing down."
The mathematician says, "I solved the case of a 2-dimensional
horse."

Q: What is the first derivative of a cow?

A: Prime Rib!

A mathematician, a biologist and a physicist are sitting in a

street cafe watching people going in and coming out of the house
on the other side of the street.

First, they see two people going into the house. Time passes.
After a while, they notice three persons coming out of the
house.
The physicist: "The measurement wasn't accurate."
The biologists: "They have reproduced".
The mathematician: "If now exactly one person enters the house
then it will be empty again."

A conjecture both deep and profound

Is whether a circle is round.
In a paper of Erdos
Written in Kurdish
A counterexample is found.

Pythagoras(ca.582507BC)
Philosopherandmathematician,borninSamos,Greece.Hesettledat
Crotona,SItaly(c.530BC)wherehefoundedamoralandreligiousschool.
Heeventuallyfledfromtherebecauseofpersecution,settlingat
MegapontuminLucania.Pythagoreanismwasfirstawayoflife,ofmoral
abstinenceandpurification,notsolelyaphilosophy;itsteachingincluded
thedoctrineofthetransmigrationofsoulsbetweensuccessivebodies.The
famousgeometricaltheoremattributedtohimwasprobablydevelopedlater
bymembersofthePythagoreanSchool,whichisbestknownforitsstudies
oftherelationsbetweennumbers.Pythagoreanthoughtexerted
considerableinfluenceonPlato'sdoctrines.Pythagoras'theoremstatesthat
thesquareonthehypotenuseofarightangletriangleequalsthesumsofthe
squaresontheothertwosides.

What is the Pythagoras' theorem all

about?

Mathematics is made of 40 percent formulas, 40 percent proofs

and 40 percent imagination.

Q: What caused the big bang?

A: God divided by zero. Oops!

This is how I remeber X and Y axses:

X goes to the sky and Y tries to Fly!!!

"A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black

cat which isn't there."
Charles Darwin

Statistics and Statisticians

Three statisticians go out hunting together. After a while they
spot a solitary rabbit. The first statistician takes aim and
overshoots. The second aims and undershoots. The third shouts
out "We got him!"
A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and
he will say that on the average he feels fine.
Q. Did you hear the one about the statistician?
A. Probably....

Old Euclid drew a circle

On a sand-beach long ago.
He bounded and enclosed it

With angles thus and so.

His set of solemn greybeards
Nodded and argued much
Of arc and of circumference,
Diameter and such.
A silent child stood by them
From morning until noon
Because they drew such charming
Round pictures of the moon.
Vachel Lindsay

Euclid(ca.325270BC)
LivedinEgypt,Alexandria;foundedaschoolthereabout300BC.Thought
tohavebeenGreek.Euclidcollectedandrearrangedalltheknownfacts
aboutgeometry,uptohistime,instepbysteporderandaddedsomenew
propositionsandproofs.Thisgreatcollectionwaswrittenoutin13rollsof
parchmentor"books"whichtogetherwerecalledelements.Modern
textbooksusedinschoolsarestillbasedonEuclidsideas,however,these
ideasarelookedatinaratherdifferentway.
TheapproachwhichobeyshisaxiomsbecameknownasEuclidean
geometry.

A guy gets on a bus and starts threatening everybody: "I'll

integrate you! I'll differentiate you!" So everybody gets scared
and runs away. Only one person stays. The guy comes up to him
and says: "Aren't you scared, I'll integrate you, I'll
differentiate you!" And the other guy says: "No, I am not scared,
I am e^x."

Math is like love a simple idea but it can get complicated.

Q: How does a mathematician induce good behavior in her

children?
A: "I've told you n times, I've told you n+1 times..."

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.
Albert Einstein

There are three types of mathematicians: those who can add and
those who can't.

I've heard that the government wants to put a tax on the

mathematically ignorant. Funny, I thought that's what the
lottery was!
Gallagher

Landau, E. asked for a testimony to the effect that Emmy

Noether was a great woman mathematician, he said: "I can
testify that she is a great mathematician, but that she is a
woman, I cannot swear."
J.E. Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co
ltd., 1953.

Archimedes(ca.287212BC)
Greekmathematician,borninSyracuse.HeprobablyvisitedEgyptand
studiedatAlexandriaattheschoolwhichEuclidhadstartedthere.
Inpopulartraditionheisrememberedfortheconstructionofsiegeengines
againsttheRomans,theArchimedes'screwstillusedforraisingwater,and
hiscryofeureka("Ihavefoundit')whenhediscoveredtheprincipleofthe

upthrustonafloatingbody.Hisrealimportanceinmathematics,however,
liesinhisdiscoveryofformulaefortheareasandvolumesofspheres,
cylinders,parabolas,andotherplaneandsolidfigures.Hefoundedthe
scienceofhydrostatics,buthisastronomicalworkislost.Hewaskilledat
thesiegeofSyracusebyaRomansoldierwhosechallengeheignoredwhile
immersedinamathematicalproblem.Archimedesisnotoriousforthe
computationof.

More about Archimedes

"Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and

theology makes them sinful."
Luther Martin

Mathematics contains much that will neither hurt one if one does
not know it nor help one if one does know it.
J.B. Mencken

"Mathematics consists of proving the most obvious thing in the

least obvious way".
Polya, George, in N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims,
Raleigh NC:Rome Press Inc., 1988.

"As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in

school."
Cokie Roberts

"Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my

teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically."
Calvin Trillin

A Mathematician, an engineer and a physicist were traveling

through Scotland when they saw a black sheep through the
window of the train.
"Aha", says the engineer, "I see that Scottish sheep are black."
"Hmm", says the physician, "You mean that some Scottish sheep
are black".
"No", says the mathematician, "All we know is that there is at
least one sheep in Scotland, and that at least one side of that
one sheep is black!"

What is ?

Mathematician: " is the ratio of the circumference of a circle

to its diameter."
Engineer: " is about 22/7."
Physicist: " is 3.14159 plus or minus 0.000005."

Computer Programmer: " is 3.141592653589 in double

precision."
Nutritionist: "You one track math-minded fellows, Pie is a
healthy and delicious dessert!"

Halloween math:
Q: Wadaya get when you take the circumference of your jack-olantern and divide it by its diameter?
A: Pumpkin .

How Archimedes did compute the value of

 Limerick
If within a circle is a line
that goes through the center to each
spine
and the line's length is D
the circumference will be
D times 3.14159

One of my undergrad professors was asked what kind of

problems would be on the final. His answer: "Just study the old
tests. The problems will be the same, just the numbers will be
different. But, not all the numbers will be different. will be
the same. Planck's constant will be the same... "

In Alaska, where it gets very cold, is only 3.00. As you know,

everything shrinks in the cold. They call it Eskimo .

"There are only two kinds of math books. Those you cannot read
beyond the first sentence, and those you cannot read beyond the
first page."
C.N. Yang, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1957.

Came across this at school, early 1950s. Funny how some things
stick!
ARCHIMEDES' PRINCIPLE
Students of physics are frequently told
Of experiments performed by great physicists of old
Like Boyles and Charles - but greatest of these
Was the Principle discovered by Archimedes.

The Sicilian King, Archimedes was told,

Ordered a crown from a large lump of gold,
And though the weight of the gold was completely correct,
The goldsmith's eye made the King suspect
That he'd made up the weight with some cheaper metal
And stolen some gold, that his debts he might settle.
His problem was then of outstanding immensity
As he had no idea, whatsoever, of density.
Climbing into a bath he received a surprise
When he noticed the water beginning to rise.
He suddenly snapped, and let out a scream,
As he realized, with joy, his long-wished-for dream.
He found the upthrust, produced on a body's base*,
To be equal in weight to the water displaced,
And soon volumes and weights would make it quite plain
What various metals the crown could contain,
And so he could easily show to his Royalty
The absolute proof of the goldsmith's disloyalty.
Leaping out of the bath at remarkable rate,
He made for the palace by doorway and gate
But the men in the street were completely confounded
To see a naked man shout "Eureka! I've found it!"
* Is this the only error? The upthrust is not on the base, but at
the Centre of Pressure!

Have you heard the one about the geometer who went to the
beach to catch some rays and came back a tangent?

Graphing rational functions is a pain in the asymptote.

Life is complex. It has real and imaginary components.

Trigonometry for farmers: swine and cowswine.

A man camped in a national park, and noticed Mr. Snake and Mrs.
Snake slithering by. "Where are all the little snakes?" he asked.
Mr. Snake replied, "We are adders, so we cannot multiply." The
following year, the man returned to the same camping spot. This
time there were a whole batch of little snakes. "I thought you
said you could not multiply," he said to Mr. Snake. "Well, the park
ranger came by and built a log table, so now we can multiply by
adding!"

Q: What does an analytic number theorist say when he is

drowning?
A: Log-log, log-log, log-log, . . .

A retired mathematician took up gardening, and is now growing

carrots with square roots.

Mermaid mathematicians wear algaebras.

Points
Have no parts or joints
How then can they combine
To form a line?
J.A. Lindon

This isn't really a joke, it supposedly happened in a UK GCSE

exam some years ago, but it may amuse you:

Q: how many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left
afterwards?
A: I can subtract it as many times as I want, and it leaves 76
every time.

AccordingtoPlutarch(45120AD),Archimedesissaidtohaverequested
hisfriendsandrelationsthat,whenhewasdead,theywouldplaceoverhis
tombaspherecontainingacylinder,inscribingitwiththeratiowhichthe
containingsolidbearstothecontained.Manysiteswereproposedforthe
locationofthetombbutitseemsthetombislost.Tolearnmoreaboutthis
topic,clickhere.

Practical Application:
He's teaching her arithmetic,
He said it was his mission,
He kissed her once, he kissed her twice
and said, "Now that's addition."
As he added smack by smack
In silent satisfaction,
She sweetly gave the kisses back
and said, "Now that's subtraction."
Then he kissed her, she kissed him,
Without an explanation,
And both together smiled and said,
"That's multiplication."
Then Dad appeared upon the scene and
Made a quick decision.
He kicked that kid three blocks away
And said, "That's long division!"

If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it

cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the
formula teach me?
St. Augustine

2 and 2 is 22

Engineer, physicist and mathematician are asked to find the

value of 2+2.
Engineer (after 3 minutes, with a slide rule): "The answer is
precisely 3.9974."
Physicist (after 6 hours of experiments): "The value is
approximately 4.002, with an error of plus-or-minus 0.005."
Mathematician (after a week of calculation): "Well, I haven't
found an answer yet but I can prove that an answer exists."

In modern mathematics, algebra has become so important that

numbers will soon only have symbolic meaning.

All the numbers went to a party and numbers being what they
are, all the evens stayed around each other and all the odds did
the same and neither group interacted with each other. Whilst
two was chatting to four he noticed zero was on his own in the
corner and suggested to four that because zero is sort of even
he should be encouraged to mix with even numbers - four agreed.
So off went two to invite zero into their little group. "Would you
like to join our little group" enquired two, to which zero replied
"I have nothing to add!"

"The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your

phone 90 degrees and try again."

ApolloniusofPerga(ca.262190BC)
GreekmathematicianoftheAlexandrianschool.Heproducedatreatiseon
conicsectionsthatincluded,aswellashisownwork,muchoftheworkof
hispredecessors,amongwhomwasEuclid.Apolloniusintroducedthe
termsparabola,hyperbola,andellipse.InhisworksGreekmathematics
reacheditsculmination.

Prime time:
The math faculty decided they got too few first year students.
So, they made a television commercial to show how exciting
mathematics can be. Too get the biggest audience it was
scheduled at prime time: 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 7 o'clock
and 11 o'clock.

Two mathematicians were having dinner in a restaurant, arguing

about the average mathematical knowledge of the American
public. One mathematician claimed that this average was woefully
inadequate, the other maintained that it was surprisingly high.
"I'll tell you what," said the cynic, "ask that waitress a simple
math question. If she gets it right, I'll pick up dinner. If not, you
do". He then excused himself to visit the men's room, and the
other called the waitress over. "When my friend comes back," he
told her, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to
respond `one third x cubed.' There's twenty bucks in it for you."
She agreed. The cynic returned from the bathroom and called
the waitress over. "The food was wonderful, thank you," the
mathematician started. "Incidentally, do you know what the
integral of x squared is?" The waitress looked pensive; almost
pained. She looked around the room, at her feet, made gurgling
noises, and finally said, "Um, one third x cubed?" So the cynic
paid the check. The waitress wheeled around, walked a few paces
away, looked back at the two men, and muttered under her
breath, "...plus a constant."

A somewhat advanced society has figured how to package basic

knowledge in pill form. A student, needing some learning, goes to
the pharmacy and asks what kind of knowledge pills are available.
The pharmacist says, "Here's a pill for English literature." The
student takes the pill and swallows it and has new knowledge
about English literature! "What else do you have?" asks the
student. "Well, I have pills for art history, biology, and world
history," replies the pharmacist. The student asks for these, and
swallows them and has new knowledge about those subjects. Then
the student asks, "Do you have a pill for math?" The pharmacist
says "Wait just a moment", and goes back into the storeroom and
brings back a whopper of a pill and plunks it on the counter. "I
have to take that huge pill for math?" inquires the student. The
pharmacist replied "Well, you know math always was a little hard
to swallow."

Top Ten Excuses for Not Doing Math Homework

1. I accidentally divided by zero and my paper burst into flames.
2. It's Isaac Newton's birthday.
3. I could only get arbitrarily close to my textbook. I couldn't
actually reach it.
4. I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in this
margin.
5. I was watching the World Series and got tied up trying to
prove that it converged.
6. I have a solar powered calculator and it was cloudy.
7. I locked the paper in my trunk but a four-dimensional dog got
in and ate it.
8. I couldn't figure out whether i am the square of negative one
or i is the square root of negative one.
9. I took time out to snack on a doughnut and a cup of coffee. I
spent the rest of the night trying to figure which one to dunk.
10. I could have sworn I put the homework inside a Klein bottle,
but this morning I couldn't find it.

Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is

a game with rules and no objectives.

God made the natural numbers. The others, were man-made.

Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891)

I'm too thick to get a good laugh from calculus jokes, but I did
come up with my own pure math joke some time ago:
There was a storm with thunder and lightening. Little Paul Erdos
was in bed, frightened and fretting and his mother couldn't calm
him. Then, as mothers seem to instinctively do, she found the
right words. "It's all right dear", she said, stroking his shiny
head, "there's always a prime between n and 2n". After that,
little Paul drifted off into a blissful sleep.

Ernst Eduard Kummer (1810-1893), a German algebraist, was

rather poor at arithmetic. Whenever he had occasion to do
simple arithmetic in class, he would get his students to help him.
Once he had to find 7 x 9. Kummer calculated 7 x 9. Kummer said
to himself: "Hmmm the product cannot be 61, because 61 is
prime, it cannot be 65, because 65 is a multiple of 5, 67 is a
prime, 69 is too big - Only 63 is left."
Paul Hoffman, de man die van 9etallen hield, 1998.

Chemistry is physics without thought. Mathematics is physics

without purpose.

WhyistherenoNobelPrizeinMathematics?

SixNobelPrizesareawardedeachyear,oneineachofthefollowing
categories:literature,physics,chemistry,peace,economics,andphysiology
&medicine.NotablyabsentfromthislistisanawardforMathematics.The
reasonforthisconspicuousomissionhasbeensubjectofextensive
speculations.But,maybethemainreasonforthisisthatNobel,aninventor
andindustrialist,didnotcreateaprizeinmathematicssimplybecausehe
wasnotparticularlyinterestedinmathematicsortheoreticalscience.His
willspeaksofprizesforthose``inventionsordiscoveries''ofgreatest
practicalbenefittomankind.Toreadmoreaboutthissubjectclickhere.
Asaresult,atthe1924InternationalCongressofMathematicians(ICM)in
Toronto,aresolutionwasadoptedthatateachICM,twogoldmedals
shouldbeawardedtorecognizeoutstandingmathematicalachievement.

A physicist and a mathematician sitting in a faculty lounge.

Suddenly, the coffee machine catches on fire. The physicist
grabs a bucket and leaps towards the sink, fills the bucket with
water and puts out the fire. The second day, the same two sit in
the same lounge. Again, the coffee machine catches on fire. This
time, the mathematician stands up, gets a bucket, hands the
bucket to the physicist, thus reducing the problem to a
previously solved one.

An engineer, physicist, and a mathematician were playing cards in

a parlor. A fire breaks out. The engineer starts to calculate how
much water it takes to put out the fire. The physicist figures out
the best theory on how to put out the fire. The mathematician
tries to prove the fire doesn't exist.

An engineer thinks that his equations are an approximation to

reality. A physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his
equations. A mathematician doesn't care.

Old mathematicians never die; they just lose some of their

functions

There is no logical foundation of mathematics, and Godel has

proved it!

A tragedy of mathematics is a beautiful conjecture ruined by an

ugly fact.

Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius Strip?

A: To get to the other... um... er...

A topologist is a man who doesn't know the difference between a

coffee cup and a doughnut.

GeometryofSpace
Duringthenineteenthcenturyrosetheideathattherearedifferent
geometries.OneofEuclidsearlyresultsaboutthegeometryofaplane,or
flatsurface,wasthatthreeanglesofatriangleaddupto180degree.But,
foranytriangledrawnonaspheretheanglesalwaysadduptomorethan
180degrees.Thesmallerthetrianglethecloseryougetto180degrees.On
asmallpartoftheearthssurfaceitiseasytobelievethatitisflat.This
typeofgeometryiscalledsphericalgeometry.But,inhyperbolicgeometry
theinsideanglesofatriangleadduptolessthan180degrees.

Tolearnhowallthesefascinatingphenomenaarepossible,click
here.

Biologists think they are biochemists, Biochemists think they are

Physical Chemists, Physical Chemists think they are Physicists,
Physicists think they are Gods, And God thinks he is a
Mathematician.

Q : Did you hear about the murderous mathematician?

A : He went on a killing spree with a pair of axis!

A mathematician and a Wall Street broker went to races. The

broker suggested to bet $10,000 on a horse. The mathematician
was skeptical, saying that he wanted first to understand the
rules, to look on horses, etc. The broker whispered that he knew
a secret algorithm for the success, but he could not convince the
mathematician.
"You are too theoretical," he said and bet on a horse. Surely,
that horse came first bringing him a lot of money. Triumphantly,
he exclaimed: "I told you, I knew the secret!"
"What is your secret?" the mathematician asked.
"It is rather easy. I have two kids, three and five years old. I
sum up their ages and I bet on number nine."
"But three and five is eight," the mathematician protested.
"I told you, you are too theoretical!" the broker replied, "Haven't
I just shown experimentally, that my calculation is correct!
3+5=9!"

Some famous mathematician was to give a keynote speech at a

conference. Asked for an advance summary, he said he would
present a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem - but they should
keep it under their hats. When he arrived, though, he spoke on a
much more prosaic topic. Afterwards the conference organizers
asked why he said he'd talk about the theorem and then didn't.
He replied this was his standard practice, just in case he was
killed on the way to the conference.

The great logician Bertrand Russell once claimed that he could

prove anything if given that 1 + 1 = 1.
So one day, some smartypants asked him, "Ok. Prove that you're
the Pope."
He thought for a while and proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope is
one. Therefore, the Pope and I are one."

By Ashley from my Math Class.....

"Your acute angle"

My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes

obtuse, but always, he was right.

Funny and Serious Math Links

Mathematics Science Fair Projects
Mathematics Trivia - mathematics humor, jokes, games, quizzes and
trivia.

The Joy of Pi - by David Blatner.

Mathematics Resources and Biogrpahy - more math links,
mathematicians' biographies and images

BACK

My Dog Kelly
Follow Us On:

1. A solo dice game is played where, on each turn, a normal pair of dice is rolled. The score
is calculated by taking the product, rather than the sum, of the two numbers shown on the
dice.
On a particular game, the score for the second roll is five more than the score for the first; the
score for the third roll is six less than that of the second; the score for the fourth roll is eleven
more than that of the third; and the score for the fifth roll is eight less than that of the fourth.
What was the score for each of these five throws?
SOLUTION:
10 is the score for the first roll.
15 is the score for the second roll.
9 is the score for the third roll.
20 is the score for the fourth roll.
12 is the score for the fifth roll.

2. A high school has a strange principal. On the first day, he has his students perform an
odd opening day ceremony:
There are one thousand lockers and one thousand students in the school. The principal asks the
first student to go to every locker and open it. Then he has the second student go to every
second locker and close it. The third goes to every third locker and, if it is closed, he opens it,
and if it is open, he closes it. The fourth student does this to every fourth locker, and so on.
After the process is completed with the thousandth student, how many lockers are open?
SOLUTION:
The only lockers that remain open are perfect squares (1, 4, 9, 16, etc) because they are the only
numbers divisible by an odd number of whole numbers; every factor other than the number's
square root is paired up with another. Thus, these lockers will be "changed" an odd number of
times, which means they will be left open. All the other numbers are divisible by an even
number of factors and will consequently end up closed.
So the number of open lockers is the number of perfect squares less than or equal to one

thousand. These numbers are one squared, two squared, three squared, four squared, and so on,
up to thirty one squared. (Thirty two squared is greater than one thousand, and therefore out of
range.) So the answer is thirty one.
3. You must cut a birthday cake into exactly eight pieces, but you're only allowed to make
three straight cuts, and you can't move pieces of the cake as you cut. How can you do it?
SOLUTION:
Use the first two cuts to cut an 'X' in the top of the cake. Now you have four pieces.
Make the third cut horizontal, which will divide the four pieces into eight. Think of a
two by two by two Rubik's cube. There's four pieces on the top tier and four more just
underneath it.

4. Can you place six X's on a Tic Tac Toe board without making three-in-a-row in any
direction?
SOLUTION:

5. Nine dots are arranged in a three by three square. Connect each of the nine dots using
only four straight lines and without lifting your pen from the paper.

Solution

6. Arrange the numbers 1 through 9 on a tic tac toe board such that the numbers in each
row, column, and diagonal add up to 15.
SOLUTION: There is only one solution, discounting mirror image solutions and
rotations:

7. Two mathematicians, Albert and Isaac, chat. Isaac says he has three children who all have the
same birthday (but who weren't necessarily born in the same year). Albert asks their ages. Isaac
replies, "The product of the ages of my children is 72." Albert points out that this is not enough
information to determine their ages. Isaac responds with another clue -- he tells Albert the sum of
the ages of his children. But Albert again points out that there is not enough information. Finally
Isaac says, "My youngest child is named Galileo." At last, Albert correctly determines the ages of
Isaac's children. What are the ages?

SOLUTION: If the product of his three children's ages is 72, there are the following possibilities:
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
3
3

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

1
2
3
4
6
8
2
3
4
6
3
4

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

72
36
24
18
12
9
18
12
9
6
8
6

=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=

72
72
72
72
72
72
72
72
72
72
72
72

Isaac later gives Albert the sum of their ages, but we don't know what number he says. We do,
however, know that Albert can't figure it out from that information. So, we take the possibilities
listed above and add them up:
1
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
3
3

+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

1
2
3
4
6
8
2
3
4
6
3
4

+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

72
36
24
18
12
9
18
12
9
6
8
6

=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=

74
39
28
23
19
18
22
17
15
14
14
13

The only way Albert wouldn't be able to figure out Isaac children's ages by knowing the sum is if
the sum was 14, because there are two possibilities. So either the children's ages are 2, 6, and 6,
or 3, 3, and 8. But Isaac points out that he has a youngest child. So the ages must be 2, 6, and 6.
8. At McDonald's you can order Chicken McNuggets in boxes of 6, 9, and 20. What is the largest
number of nuggets that it is not possible to obtain by purchasing some combination of boxes?

SOLUTION: You can buy any number of nuggets that is evenly divisible by three except for
three just by using combinations of boxes of 6 and boxes of 9. (Use at most one box of 9, then
multiples of boxes of 6.) If the number is not divisible by three, use a box of 20. If, after a box of

20 is purchased, the remaining number is divisible by three, you're all set. Otherwise, use a
second box of 20. The remaining number will necessarily be divisible by 3, and you're all set.
So the largest number that cannot be purchased would be one that requires two boxes of 20
before the remainder is reduced to a number divisible by three. Since three is the only number
evenly divisible by three that cannot be purchased, the largest impossible number is 3 + 20 + 20
= 43.

History topic: Mathematical games and

recreations
Mathematical puzzles vary from the simple to deep problems which are still unsolved. The whole
history of mathematics is interwoven with mathematical games which have led to the study of
many areas of mathematics. Number games, geometrical puzzles, network problems and
combinatorial problems are among the best known types of puzzles.
The Rhind papyrus shows that early Egyptian mathematics was largely based on puzzle type
problems. For example the papyrus, written in around 1850 BC, contains a rather familiar type of
puzzle.
Seven houses contain seven cats. Each cat kills seven mice. Each mouse had eaten seven ears of
grain. Each ear of grain would have produced seven hekats of wheat. What is the total of all of
these?
Similar problems appear in Fibonacci's Liber Abaci written in 1202 and the familiar St Ives
Riddle of the 18th Century based on the same idea (and on the number 7).
Greek mathematics produced many classic puzzles. Perhaps the most famous are from
Archimedes in his book The Sandreckoner where he gives the Cattle Problem.
If thou art diligent and wise, O Stranger, compute the number of cattle of the Sun...
In some interpretations of the problem the number of cattle turns out to be a number with 206545
digits!
Archimedes also invented a division of a square into 14 pieces leading to a game similar to
Tangrams involving making figures from the 14 pieces. Tangrams are of Chinese origin and
require little mathematical skill. It is interesting however to see how many convex figures you
can make from the 7 tangram pieces. Note again the number 7 which seems to have been

associated with magical properties. They were to have a new popularity when Dodgson, writing
as Lewis Carroll, introduced Alice type characters.
Fibonacci, already mentioned above, is famed for his invention of the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8,
13, ... where each number is the sum of the previous two. In fact a wealth of mathematics has
arisen from this sequence and today a Journal is devoted to topics related to the sequence. Here is
the famous Rabbit Problem.
A certain man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded on all sides by a wall. How many pairs
of rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed that every month each pair
begins a new pair which from the second month on becomes productive?
Fibonacci writes out the first 13 terms of the sequence but does not give the recurrence relation
which generates it.
One of the earliest mentions of Chess in puzzles is by the Arabic mathematician Ibn Kallikan
who, in 1256, poses the problem of the grains of wheat, 1 on the first square of the chess board, 2
on the second, 4 on the third, 8 on the fourth etc. One of the earliest problem involving chess
pieces is due to Guarini di Forli who in 1512 asked how two white and two black knights could
be interchanged if they are placed at the corners of a 3 3 board (using normal knight's moves).
Magic squares involve using all the numbers 1, 2, 3, ..., n2 to fill the squares of an n n board so
that each row, each column and both main diagonals sum to the same number. They are claimed
to go back as far as 2200 BC when the Chinese called them lo-shu. In the early 16th Century
Cornelius Agrippa constructed squares for n = 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 which he associated with the
seven planets then known (including the Sun and the Moon). Drer's famous engraving of
Melancholia made in 1514 includes a picture of a magic square.
The number of magic squares of a given order is still an unsolved problem. There are 880
squares of size 4 and 275305224 squares of size 5, but the number of larger squares is still
unknown.
Durer's square shown above is symmetrical and other conditions were also studied such as the
condition that all the diagonals (traced as if the square was on a torus) added to the same number
as the row and column sum. Euler studied this type of square known as a pandiagonal square. No
pandiagonal square of order 2(2n + 1) can exist but they do for all other orders. For n = 4 there
are 880 magic squares of which 48 are pandiagonal. Veblen in 1908 used matrix methods to
study magic squares.
Other early inventors of games included Recorde and Cardan. Cardan invented a game consisting
of a number of rings on a bar.
It appears in the 1550 edition of his book De Subtililate . The rings were arranged so that only
the ring A at one end could be taken on and off without problems. To take any other off the ring

next to it towards A had to be on the bar and all others towards A had to be off the bar. To take all
the rings off requires (2n+1 - 1)/3 moves if n is odd and (2n+1 - 2)/3 moves if n is even. This
problem is similar to the Towers of Hanoi described below. In fact Lucas (the inventor of the
Towers of Hanoi) gives a pretty solution to Cardan's Ring Puzzle using binary arithmetic.
Tartaglia, who with Cardan jointly discovered the algebraic solution of the cubic, was another
famous inventor of mathematical recreations. He invented many arithmetical problems, and
contributed to problems with weighing masses with the smallest number of weights and Ferry
Boat type problems which now have solutions using graph theory.
Bachet was famed as a poet, translator and early mathematician of the French Academy. He is
best known for his translation of 1621 of Diophantus's Arithmetica. This is the book which
Fermat was reading when he inscribed the margin with his famous Last Theorem. Bachet,
however, is also famed as a collector of mathematical puzzles which he published in 1612
Problmes plaisans et dlectables qui font par les nombres . It contains many of the problems
referred to above, river crossing problems, weighing problems, number tricks, magic squares etc.
Here is an example of one of Bachet's weighing problems
What is the least number of weights that can be used on a scale pan to weigh any integral
number of pounds from 1 to 40 inclusive, if the weights can be placed in either of the scale pans?
Euler is perhaps the mathematician whose puzzles have led to the most deep mathematical
disciplines. In addition to magic square problems and number problems he considered the
Knight's Tour of the chess board, the Thirty Six Officers problem and the Seven Bridges of
Knigsberg.
Euler was not the first to examine the Knight's Tour problem. De Moivre and Montmort had
looked at it and solved the problem in the early years of the 18th Century after the question had
been posed by Taylor. Ozanam and Montucla quote the solutions of both De Moivre and
Montmort. Euler, in 1759 following a suggestion of L Bertrand of Geneva, was the first to make
a serious mathematical analysis of it, introducing concepts which were to become important in
graph theory. Lagrange also contributed to the understanding of the Knight's Tour problem, as
did Vandermonde.
The Seven Bridges of Knigsberg heralds the beginning of graph theory and topology.
The Thirty Six Officers Problem, posed by Euler in 1779, asks if it is possible to arrange 6
regiments consisting of 6 officers each of different ranks in a 6 6 square so that no rank or
regiment will be repeated in any row or column. The problem is insoluble but it has led to
important work in combinatorics.
Another famous chess board problem is the Eight queens problem. This problem asks in how
many ways 8 queens can be placed on a chess board so that no two attack each other. The
generalised problem, in how many ways can n queens be placed on an n n board so that no two
attack each other, was posed by Franz Nauck in 1850. In 1874 Gnther and Glaisher described

methods for solving this problem based on determinants. There is a unique solution (up to
symmetry) to the 6 6 problem and the puzzle, in the form of a wooden board with 36 holes into
which pins were placed, was sold on the streets of London for one penny.
In 1857 Hamilton described his Icosian game at a meeting of the British Association in Dublin. It
was sold to J. Jacques and Sons, makers of high quality chess sets, for 25 and patented in
London in 1859. The game is related to Euler's Knight's Tour problem since, in today's
terminology, it asks for a Hamiltonian circuit in a certain graph. The game was a failure and sold
very few copies.
Another famous problem was Kirkman's School Girl Problem. The problem, posed in 1850, asks
how 15 school girls can walk in 5 rows of 3 each for 7 days so that no girl walks with any other
girl in the same triplet more than once. In fact, provided n is divisible by 3, we can ask the more
general question about n school girls walking for (n - 1)/2 days so that no girl walks with any
other girl in the same triplet more than once. Solutions for n = 9, 15, 27 were given in 1850 and
much work was done on the problem thereafter. It is important in the modern theory of
combinatorics.
Around this time two professional inventors of mathematical puzzles, Sam Loyd and Henry
Ernest Dudeney, were entertaining the world with a large number of mathematical games and
recreations. Loyd's most famous game was the 15 puzzle.
Loyd was also famous for his chess puzzles. He invented a number of puzzles, some of which
are very hard, which he published in the first number of the American Chess Journal.
Edouard Lucas invented the Towers of Hanoi in 1883.
The game of pentominoes is of more recent invention. The problem of tiling an 8 8 square with
a square hole in the centre was solved in 1935. This problem was shown by computer to have
exactly 65 solutions in 1958. In 1953 more general polyominoes were introduced. It is still an
unsolved problem how many distinct polyominoes of each order there are. There are 12
pentominoes, 35 hexominoes and 108 heptominoes (including one rather dubious one with a hole
in the middle!). Puzzles with polyominoes were invented by Solomon W. Golomb, a
mathematician and electrical engineer at Southern California University.
There is a 3-dimensional version of pentominoes where cubes are used as the basic elements
instead of squares. A 3 4 5 rectangular prism can be made from the 3-dimensional
pentominoes. Closely related to these is Piet Hein's Soma Cubes. This consists of 7 pieces, 6
pieces consisting of 4 small cubes and one of 3 small cubes. The aim of this game is to assemble
a 3 3 3 cube. This can in fact be done in 230 essentially different ways!
A slightly older game (1921) but still a cube game is due to P A MacMahon and called 30

Coloured Cubes Puzzle. There are 30 cubes which have all possible permutations of precisely 6
colours for their faces. (Can you prove there are exactly 30 such cubes?) Choose a cube at
random and then choose 8 other cubes to make a 2 2 2 cube with the same arrangement of
colours for it's faces as the first chosen cube. Each face of the 2 2 2 cube has to be a single
colour and the interior faces have to match in colour.
Raymond Smullyan, a mathematical logician, composed a number of chess problems of a very
different type from those usually composed. They are know known as problems of retrograde
analysis and their object is to deduce the past history of a game rather than the future of a game
which is the conventional problem. Problems of retrograde analysis are problems in
mathematical logic.
One of the most important of the modern professional puzzle inventors and collectors is Martin
Gardner who wrote an extremely good column in Scientific American for about 30 years,
stopping about four years ago. He published some of Smullyan's retrograde analysis chees
problems in 1973. He also reported on a computing game in 1973. Of course the advent of
personal computers has made both the writing and playing of mathematical games for computers
an important new direction. The game Gardner reported on was 'Spirolaterals' devised by Frank
Olds with only 3 or 4 lines of code.
The most famous of recent puzzles in the of Rubik's cube invented by the Hungarian Ern Rubik.
It's fame is incredible. Invented in 1974, patented in 1975 it was put on the market in Hungary in
1977. However it did not really begin as a craze until 1981. By 1982 10 million cubes had been
sold in Hungary, more than the population of the country. It is estimated that 100 million were
sold world-wide. It is really a group theory puzzle, although not many people realise this.
The cube consists of 3 3 3 smaller cubes which, in the initial configuration, are coloured so
that the 6 faces of the large cube are coloured in 6 distinct colours. The 9 cubes forming one face
can be rotated through 45. There are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different arrangements of the
small cubes, only one of these arrangements being the initial position. Solving the cube shows
the importance of conjugates and commutators in a group.