Mathematics Stack Exchange
Mathematics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [recreational-mathematics]

Mathematics done just for fun, often disjoint from typical school mathematics curriculum. Also see the [puzzle] and [contest-math] tags.

Recreational mathematics is a general term for mathematical problems studied for the sake of pure intellectual curiosity, or just for the enjoyment of thinking about mathematics, without necessarily having any practical application or expectation of deep theoretical results.

Recreational mathematics problems are often easy to understand even for people without an extensive mathematical education, even if the theory they lead to may turn out to be surprisingly deep. Thus, recreational mathematics can serve to attract the curiosity of non-mathematicians and to inspire them to develop their mathematical skills further.

Many typical recreational mathematics problems fall into the fields of discrete mathematics (combinatorics, elementary number theory, etc.), probability theory and geometry. Important contributors to recreational mathematics are Sam Loyd and Martin Gardner.

5128 questions
0
votes
1 answer

pick three drawing

Our veterans club has a daily pick 3. We currently have one cage with 30 balls numbered 0 thru 9. The first number is drawn and returned to the cage and the next two the same way. I believe this gives an advantage to someone with triple or double…
jbrown
  • 1
0
votes
2 answers

Mapping two integers to one: deriving formula

I have an interesting puzzle: Given two non-negative integers, let's call them $x$ and $y$, work out a formula for $z$ as shown in the table below: x ___|_0__1__2__3__4_... 0 | 0 1 3 6 10 1 | 2 4 7 11 16 y 2 | 5 8 12 17 23 ...…
wizzwizz4
  • 147
0
votes
1 answer

Connection between 7 and 13

While there have been many numbers that have been deemed 'lucky' or 'unlucky', 7 and 13 are two of the most prominently known. So, this had led me to wonder if there were any connections between 7 and 13, and found the following. $1$. $(7,13)$ is…
S.C.B.
  • 22,768
0
votes
1 answer

Is there a function that allows you to generate the highest multiple of a number below a certain boundary?

Say for example, that I want the highest multiple of 36 below 100. Is there a function that allows me to generate this with two arbitrary numbers?
IgnorantCuriosity
  • 1,423
0
votes
0 answers

Branch of mathematics that deals with... iterations?

Is there a branch of mathematics that would deal with the ideas like the following: How would you coat a rectangular area in paint with a paintbrush that has a finite length less than the length of the rectangular area but an infinitely small…
sneelhorses
  • 123
0
votes
1 answer

Getting X based on table values

I have a table of values; $$3.00 \mapsto 12.15$$ $$3.10 \mapsto 12.82$$ And I'd like to know an equation for getting the inbetween values. For example: $$3.05 \mapsto \frac{12.15 + 12.82}2$$ But I'm not sure how I'd do this, and I'm not sure of the…
Robert Pounder
  • 103
0
votes
1 answer

How to solve simple programming problem with strange math question?

Here is the question: A cookie recipe calls for the following ingredients: 1.5 cups of sugar 1 cup of butter 2.75 cups of flour The recipe produces 48 cookies with this amount of the ingredients. Write a program that asks the user how many…
fantom
  • 183
0
votes
1 answer

Bat and ball calculations

How would you work this out in MS-Excel? A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The answer is that the bat costs $1.05 and the ball costs $0.05. Source:…
oshirowanen
  • 111
0
votes
1 answer

Finding maximal and minimal values under certain limitations

given a function that gets 3 numbers and outputs the maximal of them, I have to find using only this function the minimal number out of 3 given numbers. max(x1,x2,x3) returns maximal value for now, I think I should get the sum of all the 3 numbers,…
Ami Gold
  • 1,130
0
votes
1 answer

Formula to calculate fastest minute of a horse race

I though of a problem (which is more of a fun to do than anything else), that it's the following: Is it possible to find a formula (or something similar) that calculates the fastest minute of a horse in a race? For example, let's take the example of…
LnxSlck
  • 103
0
votes
0 answers

Finding the co-efficient of $x^{10}$ in $\frac{1}{(1-x^{10})(1-x^5)(1-x^2)(1-x)}$

While trying to solve a problem with from STEP questions, I encountered this. I am not sure whether this approach is right for that question but this doesn't look like the right way to approach. Any information would be helpful.
Abu Bardewa
  • 411
0
votes
1 answer

Mental math tip needed; moving decimal around on larger and smaller numbers?

When I do calculations I like to round off to say nanometers for wavelength. That means I need it in the form $whatever \times 10^{-9}$. The problem here is that regardless of the number I manage to mess that up in my head. Same goes for large…
Algific
  • 1,899
0
votes
1 answer

Totem Pole sequences

Worth a shot: Find sequences of consecutive integers with consecutive bit counts. I'm not very good at this sort of thing, so I managed 8,9.
JMP
  • 21,771
0
votes
1 answer

Expected number of person not to get shot - reloaded

Inspired from this question I came up with a seemingly simpler problem that I could not solve either. There are $n$ people sit on a round table. At noon, each person shots and kills one of their neighbours, chosen randomly (so, everyone shoots…
mau
  • 9,774
0
votes
0 answers

Where the center of gravity be for an umbilic torus?

Due to its unusual shape I am unsure if the COG would be right in the center of closer to the side with (what looks like) more mass on the outside?
Joe
  • 534
1 2 3
…
35 36