Math Forum / Mathematics / Recreational Math / March 2004

of course not (at least not really), but still something interesting
nonetheless...  usually the approximations you find of sqrt(2) are found by
calculating series which involve trig functions and all sorts of

Please can anyone direct me to sites where i can learn about calculus
with worked examples using numerical instead of algebraic values. i
seem to be much more able to follow the math when a real problem is
set down with numbers rather than letters. i understand the reason for

Hello eveyone.
            I hope someone out there can help me with this problem.
 Suppose you had an equation as follows:
         Z =( Y + tan theta * X )- H / cos theta.

Does anyone know of a way to express the number
 33.11445599...
that isn't based on isolating the individual digits of Pi?
The problem came up my school's math club's mailing list.

Let two integers be randomly chosen from the interval (2,N).  As N becomes
very large what is the probability these integers are relatively prime?
Best wishes, Jim

You may recall the following.  We couldn't prove that 3 or 4 points could
not be enclosed by their associated circles.  I'm never one to quit.  Then
again, I'm never one to keep trying.  That leaves me with but one recourse:
Get someone to do it for me!!  So I posted the problem on ...

A friend set me a paradox puzzle  that I cannot fault his logic on. HELP please
You take the square root of -1 and square ir, the answer must be -1, however....
He says, write it as root -1 multiply root -1
Then place them all under the same root (Root (-1 times -1))

do all faces on a geometric figure have to be the same in order to be
called a face?  (ie all squares on a cube, but a rectangular prism has
squares and rectangles)

In the following p is a real number,
        X(X^4 + 10*X^2 + 5)
 F(X)= --------------------  , (x in R),
        5*X^4 +10*X^2 + 1

A friend of mine is trying to organise a series of events, and while
the math/geometry side of it isn't exactly your usual college stuff,
it is wayyy beyond his or my own brain.  The truth is, we don't even
know how to translate it into mathematical or geometric terms to get

POLYNOMIAL ROOTS
A method is devised whereby the solution to higher degree
polynomials is reduced to solving a quadradic.
eqn of plane pi[1]:

Hello can anyone solve this small problem for me..or atleast help me
if iam going wrong..
*There are two balls touching each other circumferencically.
The radius of the big ball is 4 times the diameter of the small

The following problem is an adaptation of GCSE maths coursework in the UK
but the generalisation into d dimensions ( I was just about to post this
when I realised I was using n for the dimensions and for part of the size of
the array so d dimensions it is) forms no part of the ...

Here's a little problem I've been playing around with.  Given a sliding tile
puzzle of arbitrary size where one tile location is left empty:
A. define a _move_ to be any single sliding operation wether 1 tile is slid
or any number of tiles up to and including the whole row or column ...