A MATHEMATICAL MOSAIC

Patterns & Problem Solving

by

Ravi Vakil

Brendan Kelly Publishing Inc.

2122 Highview Drive
Burlington, Ontario L7R 3X4

Cover design: Pronk&Associates

T

Illustrations:

Ontarfo

Taisa Kelly

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part /

Number Theory
Calculating Tricks of the Trade
Mission Impossible
Calculating Prodigies and Idiot Savants
The Magic Birthday Predictor Cards
Divisibility Rules
The Factor Theorem
More Complicated Divisibility Tests
The Secret Behind the Magic Birthday Predictor Cards
Magic Squares
Two Theorems about Magic Squares
Personal Profile: Do What You Enjoy!

18
19
20
21
22
26
27
30
31
35
40

Combinatorics
A Mathematical Card Trick
Counting the Faces of Hypercubes
How the Mathematical Card Trick Works
The Water and Wine Puzzle
Questions About Soccer Balls
Personal Profile: Cracking Intractable Problems That's a Big Buzz

44
45
51
52
53
54

The Fibonacci Sequence

Elvis Numbers
Historical Digression:
Fibonacci: The Greatest European Mathematician of the Middle Ages
The Solution to Elvis the Elf s Eccentric Exercise
A Formula for the nth Term of the Fibonacci Sequence

56
57
59
60

Game Theory
The Theory of Games
The Game of Nim
Game Theory and Politics: Arrow's Theorem
Historical Digression: Social Choice Theory
Elementary My Dear Watson!

64
66
68
72
74

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part L

Geometry
Historical Digression:
The Mathematician Who Anticipated Calculus by Almost 2000 Years
Lengths, Areas, and Volumes: Arguments Both True & False
Part 1: The Area of a Circle
Part 2: The Area of a Segment of a Parabola
Part 3: The Surface Area of a Sphere
Part 4: The Volume of a Sphere
Archimedes Strikes Again
The Falling Ladder Problem
An Easy Proof that arctan 1/3 + arctan 1/2 = 45
The Ailles Rectangle
Solution to the Ailles Rectangle Problem
Personal Profile: One of the Purest Forms of Mental Exercise
\

78
79
79
79
80
81
82
85
86
87
88
89

Combinatorics Revisited
Parity Problems: The World Series
The "Brute Force" Solution
The Elegant Solution
More Parity Problems
The Triangles of Pascal, Chu Shih-Chieh, and Sierpinski
Solutions to the Parity Problems

92
93
95
96
98
103

Chessboard Coloring
The Invention of Chess
A Chessboard Tiling Problem
A Solution to the Chessboard Tiling Problem
A Tetromino Tiling Problem
Another Chessboard Tiling Problem
Solution to the Tetromino Tiling Problem
Personal Profile: A Sudden Flash of Insight

106
107
108
110
111
113
114

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part II

Number Theory Revisited
Numbers, Numbers, and More Numbers!
First Steps in Number Theory: Rational and Irrational Numbers
Historical Digression: The Most Famous Conjecture in Mathematics
Prime Numbers in Number Theory
The Painted Lockers
Geometry Meets Number Theory: Constructing Pythagorean Triples
A Strange Result in Base 2 and Base 5
A Remarkable Coincidence?
Or An Even More Remarkable Non-Coincidence?
Historical Digression:
The Poor Clerk who Knew Numbers on a First-Name Basis
Solution to the Painted Lockers Problem
Sum of A* Powers
Historical Digression: A Mathematical Genius of the Highest Order
Bernoulli Numbers
Historical Digression: The Incredible Bernouilli Family
Personal Profile: Nothing Makes Me Less Aware of the Passage of Time

118
120
123
124
127
128
131
132
133
134
135
137
140
141
142

Fibonacci & The Golden Mean

Funny Fibonacci Facts
The Golden Mean
Some Interesting Properties of the Golden Mean
The Pythagorean Pentagram, The Golden Mean, & Strange Trigonometry

146
150
151
154

Geometry Revisited
A Do-It-Yourself Proof of Heron's Formula
A Short Route to the Cosine Law
Solution to the Falling Ladder Problem
Locus Hokus Pokus
The Triangle Inequality: From "Common Sense" to Einstein
More Locus Hokus Pokus
A Short Question on Symmetry

160
163
164
165
166
173
174

Infinity
The Mathematics of the Birds and the Bee
An Early Encounter with the Infinite
The Flaw in Zeno's Paradox
The Harmonic Series
Historical Digression: The Human Computer
Answer to the Mathematics of the Birds and the Bee

176
177
178
179
184
184

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part II

Game Theory Revisited
Sherlock Holmes' Secret Strategy
A Three-Way Duel: Why Multi-Player Games are Much Harder to Analyze
Why Holmes' Strategy Works
How to Win at Nim

186
187
189
191

Concepts in Calculus
Historical Digression: The Man Who Solved the System of the World
A Question of Continuity
An Integration by Parts Paradox
Answer to A Question of Continuity
Dual Numbers
Personal Profile: A Big 'Yes!!!' Goes Through my Head

196
198
199
200
201
205

Complex Numbers
i' and Other Improbabilities

208

Historical Digression: The Oddly Polyglot Statement

Addition Formulas for Sine and Cosine
Computing!'
Roots of Unity
Three Impossible Problems of Antiquity
Galois Theory

e"1 + 1 = 0

Historical Digression:
Pistols at Dawn The Teenager who Launched Abstract Algebra
Using Complex Numbers in Geometry

209
211
212
213
215
218

219
220

Infinity Revisited
Paradox!
Two Different Infinities
An Infinitude of Infinities
Historical Digression:
The Man Who Shook the Foundations of Mathematics
The Existence of Transcendental Numbers
Personal Profile: The Youngest Tenured Professor in Harvard History

226
229
234

Afterword
Annotated References
Index

246
248
251

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