13 Math Tidbits on Friday 13

Friday 13 is one of the beloved or lucky days in the Gregorian calendar year for most recreational mathematicians and math bloggers, who can't wait to share some musings about the number 13 and Friday the thirteenth to their non-mathematical friends, fiends, and foes.

1. Triskaidekaphobia Isn't Hereditary

If you can read about the number 13, you probably don't suffer from triskaidekaphobia—the fear of the number 13… but your children and grandchildren still might.

2. Pseudoscience Triumphs Over Profit 

On a plane or in a theater, shouldn't you feel "unsafe" rather than safe because row "13" has often been intentionally mislabeled "14"?

Or, In a lift with no button number 13, would you feel "safer" that they've tried to "cheat death" by making triskaidekaphobes or paraskavedekatriaphobes (who are fearful of Friday the 13th) feel better? All in the name of profit or superstition!

3. Synesthesia AND Autism AND Math

What color and shape is the number 13? What is the taste of 13? 

© [Unknown]

This book may shed some light on the prime number 13!

4. The Closest of Two Friday the 13ths 

Can Friday the 13th occur in two successive months? It's not difficult to see that the shortest span between two consecutive Friday the 13ths is 28 days. How often do you think this event happens? Have you experienced one in your lifetime, or know of someone who rejoices in this kind of numerical (or numerological) oddity?

5. An Unsolved Arithmetic Problem

The number 13 is both a prime and a Fibonacci number. Whether there are infinitely many primes that are also Fibonacci still remains an unsolved problem.

Cracking this higher arithmetic nut may bring you some mathematical prestige or fame, as your proof graces the pages of a Number Theory publication. 

6. A Friday 13 Baby

A baby is born on Friday 13, 2013. When is the next time a baby will be born on the same day of the week in the same month, which also falls on a Friday 13? How often in a 400-year calendrical cycle does this happen?

7. A Friday 13 Survivor 

What are the odds that you will not survive on a Friday the 13th? Is the answer equivalent to finding the probability that a baby will be born on a Friday 13?

8. An Inauspicious Day 

Using the code A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, ...., show that the sum value of the phrase FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH IS AN UNLUCKY DAY is a multiple of 13.

9. Birth and Death on a Friday 13

What are the chances that one born on a Friday 13 will also die on a Friday 13? How many thousands of folks every year experience this double whammy? 

A solution may be found from Aha! Math.

10. Bio of 13

Prepare a résumé for Number 13, showcasing some of its elementary numerical skills. For instance,

13 = 1 + 4 + 8

13 = 3⁰ + 3¹ + 3²

12 × 13 = 156 and 21 × 31 = 651

13² = 169 and 31² = 961

11. The Unluckiest and the Happiest

List 13 parallelisms between Friday 13 and December 25—what common features the most fearful (or frightful) date of the calendrical year shares with the king of the public holidays. Get creative, by connecting the unconnected!

An ideal gift for numbers lovers & creative problem solvers

 

12. Social Media 13

Defriend 13 of your Facebook friends, or unfollow 13 of your Twitter followers, who have been inactive in the last 13 months. Send them a Friday 13 alert of your mean intention to save bits and bytes on your RAM to reduce your carbon footprint.

13. Problem Posing on a Friday 13

Pose at least 13 mathematical quickies and trickies, and share them with your on-line friends and fiends.

What is the angle between the hands of a clock at 13:13?

The sum of the ages of Casey and Ian is 13 years. If Casey is 1.3 months older than Ian, how old are they?

A Happy & Blessed Friday 13!

References

Yan, K. C. (2011). CHRISTmaths: A creative problem solving math book. Singapore: MathPlus Publishing.

Yan, K. C. (2006). Aha! math. Singapore: Panpac Education.

© Yan Kow Cheong, December 13, 2013.

The Ig Nobel Prizes in Mathematics

We don't have a Nobel Prize in Mathematics, and a number of hypotheses have been put forward to rationalize why Mr. Alfred Nobel didn't see fit to award such a coveted prize to the mathematical fraternity.

The closest (or an equivalent) to a Nobel Prize in Mathematics is the Fields Medal, officially known as the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, which is granted every four years to between two and four mathematicians for outstanding or groundbreaking research. 

Traditionally given to mathematicians under the age of 40, Fields medalists receive an honorable Can$15,000, an amount probably sufficient enough to defray the cost of their airfare and accommodation should they decide not to channel their winnings to some charitable organization.

Ig(noble) Nobel Prize in Mathematics 

For the majority of mathematicians who can't be nominated for a Fields medal, because they're not born with the "mathematical gene," there's still an infinitesimal hope that some may be awarded an Ig Nobel in Mathematics.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October for ten unusual achievements in scientific research. The prizes are to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." 

These highly-coveted prizes are awarded in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research.

Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), these awards are presented by a group that includes Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theater, and they are followed by a set of public lectures by the winners at MIT.

Ig Nobel Laureates

Let's look at some past Ig Nobel winners in Mathematics, Probability, or Statistics.  

The Ups and Downs of Cows

2013 Probability Prize

Bert Tolkamp, Marie Haskell, Fritha Langford, David Roberts, and Colin Morgan, from the UK, for making two related discoveries:

1. The longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up.

2. Once a cow stands up, you can't easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.

The End of the World

2011 Mathematics Prize 

Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of Korea (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of Uganda (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.

The Hundred Trillion Dollar Book 

2009 Mathematics Prize

Gideon Gono, the governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank until 2013, for giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers—from the very small to the very big—by having his bank print bank notes with denominations ranging from one cent ($.01) to one hundred trillion dollars ($100,000,000,000,000).

The Number of Shots

2006 Mathematics Prize 

Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, for calculating the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.

Elephantine Surface Area

2002 Mathematics Prize

K.P. Streekumar and the late G. Nirmalan of Kerala Agricultural University, India, for their analytical report, "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants."  

No winners from 1999 to 2001.

Private Dimensions

1998 Statistics Prize

Jerald Bain of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, and Kerry Siminoski of the University of Alberta, for their carefully measured report, "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size."

No winners from 1995 to 1997.

Who Are Going to Hell?

1994 Mathematics Prize

The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama, mathematical measurers of morality, for their county-by-county estimate of how many Alabama citizens will go to Hell if they don't repent.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the Antichrist

1993 Mathematics Prize

Robert Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, far-sighted and faithful seer of statistics, for calculating the exact odds (710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist.

Note: In 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

No winners in 1991 and 1992.

If you think that academic papers are darn boring, The Best of Annals of Improbable Research would dismiss that!

Research Topics for an Ig Nobel Prize Award

Let me end with some improbable or irreproducible research topics you may consider brainstorming with your team members. Who knows? You may end up getting nominated for an Ig Nobel Prize in Mathematics, Probability, or Statistics; and with some luck, even be a future Ig Nobel Laureate.

Why Singapore Math Is Russian in Origin

The Golden Ratio and Orgasm

How to Pray to a Black Hole

Deifying Primes and Matrices

Schizophrenia and Sudoku

Gambling May Prolong Your Life

The Secret Life of Pi

Vampire Literature: A Catalyst to Topological Insights

The Sound of e

Origami Pride

Pirate Math 

A Calculus of Corruption

101 Uses of the Golden Mean

The Freudian Meaning of Sexy Primes

A Fourier Analysis of the Singapore Math Syndrome

^O? ^0? ^o?

Another first for Singapore!

A little-known factoid is that former Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, won the 1994 Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology, for his thirty-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons.

Call for Submissions 
Know of any improbable research, email it to marca@improbable.com

E-mail your Ig Nobel Nominations to air@improbable.com

Visit the Annals of Improbable Research Web site.

References

Abrahams, M. (2012). This is improbable: Chesse string theory, magnetic chickens, and other WTF research. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.

Abrahams, M. (2002). The Ig Nobel Prizes: The Annals of Improbable Research. New York: Dutton.

Abrahams, M. (ed.) (1998). The Best of Annals of Improbable Research. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

Scherr, G. H. & Glenn, J. (eds.) (1997). The Journal of Irreproducible Results II. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

You'll have a heck of a good time reading the papers gracing the pages of the Journal of Irreproducible Results!

© Yan Kow Cheong, October 15, 2013.

Thank you, Math!

Journal writing in mathematics education is often perceived as a boring activity in getting students to reflect on their own mathematical thinking. Perhaps an appealing way to assess students' mastery of mathematical concepts is to encourage them to write "mathematical letters" to a buddy in the form of "thanks goodness for anything numerical or mathematical."

Let's look at a sample of these math-lite correspondences.

Dear Numbers

© mashable.com 

Thank you for being such a buddy I can always count on. You don't change because of geography or history. A while ago, you gave me an idea to blog on "Singapore Math by Numbers." Without you, the world would come to a standstill. You numbers don't just rule the world; today, you've been semi-elevated to a god—with all your metrics and analytics.

Numerically yours

Dear Calculus book

Thank you for letting me use you as a weight or support. Your thickness scares the hell out of so many otherwise intelligent mortals, especially those who have had an unpleasant experience with their high school math teachers. Besides, I use you as an inexpensive cure to help my friends and loved ones, who are suffering from insomnia—your deltas and epsilons are sufficient to hypnotize the hardcore sufferers.

Infinitesimally yours


Dear 1001

© shashindrasri.blogspot.com

You're a mirror to my numerical soul. Indeed, you provided me with so many oddities and idiosyncrasies about the Palindromic Family. In fact, I've started writing the first few chapters of "The Joy (and Pain) of Palindromic Numbers."

Palindromically yours

Dear LOGIC

Thanks for being such a reliable companion in my dealing with irrational and illogical folks. Your cold, austere character has put off many egos, who would otherwise have trampled over the rest of us.

Logically yours

An i-protractor
© 1mobile.com

Dear Protractor

I hope you won't go the way of the abacus or slide rule, because I'm seeing lesser use of you these days. Anyway, I promise to keep you as a vintage math instrument for my grandchildren.

Dear Compasses & Unmarked Ruler

Thank you for frustrating and humbling thousands of our mathematical forefathers in their futile attempts to constructing a square with the same area of a circle. To revive your popularity, I'll be conducting an enrichment math lesson on The Lost Art of the Compass.

Christmas all year-round

Dear 25

Thanks for confiding with me some of your innermost secrets, which allowed me to write some parallelisms between the king of the public holidays and the queen of the sciences. Don't worry, I'll dedicate CHRISTmaths to you on its silver edition.

Joyfully yours

Join the CHRISTmaths fan page.

Dear Boring Math Teacher

You provide jobs to half a dozen tutors, as they try to teach the most disliked subject in school in a less parrot-like manner! And your boring test of artificial questions only serves as a filter to separate the nerd from the herd—the mathematical goats from the sheep.

© business.mcmaster.ca

Dear Probability

Thanks for mocking my intuition and flawed logic. The answers to your problems have humbled the mathematical brethren, as you tease them with your counter-intuitive results.

 © tower.com

Dear FRENCH

Thank you for making me pronounce the first part of the word "factorize" to sound like the four-letter word. To test my hypothesis, I tried that trick on my French female teacher many moons ago, and the class then couldn't control themselves but burst into laughter*. 

Fact-ally yours

* Try this trick on your French-speaking friends and fans who speak English as a second or third language.

Dear Math Editor

Thank you for introducing me to so many conceptual and linguistic faux pas—I couldn't have fabricated them without your poor grammar and punctuation, and shaky grasp of some difficult mathematical concepts. Some are jaw-achingly funny. My collection of your blunders is growing, and I couldn't wait to compile them in a book for green editors. If only I knew earlier that "poor writes" could open up the doors to many freelance assignments. 

© 123opticalillusions.com

Dear Dice

Thank you for feeling so good in my hand and for showing me so many different possible outcomes. You've taught me a lot about chance and probability, and you look pretty sitting on my book shelves. That's where you'll stay. Love, Leah.

Dear Sex

Thank you for revealing to me your intimate liaison with the most boringly taught and disliked subject in school. And for giving me enough materials to writing and getting "Mathematics And Sex" published.  Indeed, MATH is a four-letter word! 

© mathandchess.net

Dear Chess

Thank you for using me to beat those older and smarter chaps. Mentally satisfying to "humble" them! But I can't stand you when you used the same trick on me years later—when those young geeks refused to let me win or draw even one game.

Dear Calculators

Although you had atrophied my mental calculation abilities, however, you're a God-sent tool to working out those tedious and mindless computations. I'm totally dependent on you for my everyday numerical chores—from calculating the waiter's tip to finding the amount I owe to the credit card companies. On the negative side, you've upped my innumeracy index by a dozen points. On a positive note, I wished you'd upgrade yourself to becoming an instrument of desire, just like the iPad. 

Dear Amazon.com

A trick-and-tricky math book 

Thank you for showcasing our math titles on your site, but we hate that 55 percent you're charging us every time there is an order for our books. When we factor in the time we need to dispatch them, and the shipping freight, most of us are only operating at a negative profit! Plus, your payment in US dollars, and your reluctance to link with PayPal, makes authors living outside the US hesitant to promote their titles on Amazon.

Dear ZERO

© spaceadventures.com

Thanks for sharing with me how you're once marginalized by your fellow numerals, and how you're even ostracized by the Catholic Church for calling you the "infidel zero." Your forgiving spirit towards the Pope and his bishops, and your revelation to Newton and gang regarding some of your oddities and idiosyncrasies, had earned you a numerical place in the Mathematical Hall of Fame. However, your critics never cease to call you the "troublesome zero."

Dear NOTHING

Folks always mistake you for the numeral zero—both of you are like faux twins. Zero is nothing, and nothing is zero. In fact, you're anything but nothing—you're something! Philosophers and mystics curse or deify you, with their ever-convoluted arguments—they've almost elevated you to the status of an atheistic religion. 

There's almost an alphabet for your name: abyss, chasm, emptiness, hole, pit, void, nothingness, nada, naught, …, nil, nix, zilch.

books.google.com

Dear Empty Set

Thank you for causing so much confusion among school kids. Do you exist or not? Are you really a set? Are you like a club with no members? Or, a bag without items? You're like something with zero nothings.

© shop.cafepress.com 

Dear Imaginary Numbers

Once upon a time, they denied your existence, just like your rejected, dejected, and ejected cousins, the negative numbers. But today, like zero, you're having the last laugh; in fact, we often take you, guys, for granted, albeit you prefer to keep a low profile. I wished school teachers won't tell the kids that you're complex, when you're really simple to manage.

Dear May 1

This is the only date in the year, when working folks don't have to labor. A day of protests and political rallies, you remind the masses of Karl Marx's words that workers of the world must unite—that they have nothing to lose but their chains.

© eoagh.com

Dear Black Hole

It's beyond my reasoning ability to understand the math that predicted your existence. Thank God, He produces a few Hawkings among His creation every century or so to reveal your galactic existence and importance. 

 © abqjournal.com

Dear Sudoku

You give me hope that in my golden years my chances of dying from schizophrenia or dimentia are significantly reduced if I indulge myself to playing with you more often.

Dear Numerology

© geocaching.com 

From the simple idea of digital root, you manage to bluff tens of millions of numerically challenged folks into believing that they can predict their good and bad days, and that they can take control of their future from their birthdates. Indeed, a pseudo-equation of yours is: f(birthdate) = lucky/unlucky days 

Dear iPhone

Thank you for saving me the trouble of having to carry a scientific calculator around. Yes, by a mere 90-degree turn, you magically turn yourself from a four-function to a scientific calculator. I look forward to seeing you functioning as a graphing calculator in a-not-too-distant upgrade. Hope you can strike a deal with Texas or Casio, just like you did with HP.

Dear Statistics

Thank you for revealing to me all your curves and standard deviations. However, I'm still confused about your three musketeers: mean, mode, and median. Which mean do you mean? Now I understand why some folks call you "Sadistic Statistics" for torturing hundreds of thousands of students every day.

Dear 13

© sabotagetimes.com 

I know you didn't deserve that awful publicity surrounding your name, especially when those superstitious folks wickedly try to associate you with some black Friday. You're just an innocent-looking prime who had suffered so much—far worse than 666 and 4444.

Thank you for providing me with rich materials to write about, every time you fall on a Friday. We, recreational math enthusiasts, feel a bit like "numerical hypocrites," when we can't help but gossip about the numerical quirks of Friday 13.

Un-triskaidekaphobically yours

Dear Death

Thanks for being the great equalizer. You won't let the rich and the powerful, or the arrogant and the haughty, live beyond their undeservedly numbered days. Three scores and ten, or a billion odd heartbeats—that's your deadline to them, all!

It's now time to write and e-mail some math-lite letters to the rest of us to read and enjoy!

Mathematically yours

Reference
Dieterich, L. (2011). thx thx thx: thank goodness for everything. Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC. thxthxthx.com

© Yan Kow Cheong, July 24, 2012