April 18, 2002<\/p>\n
OLD CHALLENGE.<\/b>\u00a0If you had to disappear, so that no one could find you, where would you go to live?<\/p>\n
ANSWER<\/b>\u00a0(Joe Shipman).<\/p>\n
1) If I only had a little money, I would become a migrant farm worker or laborer. They have no fixed address, work on a cash basis, and don’t get asked many questions. 2) If I had a fair amount of money (say $25,000) I would set myself up in a cabin in the wilderness. 3) If I had a lot of money (say $250,000) I would buy a good houseboat that could be sailed singlehandedly and move from port to port every couple of months.<\/p>\n
POINCAR\u00c9 CONJECTURE PROVED?<\/b>\u00a0In 1904 the great French mathematician Henri Poincar\u00e9 conjectured that the 3D sphere (easily pictured in 4D space) is the only compact, connected 3-dimensional manifold in which every loop can be shrunk to a point. The appropriate analog in all other dimensions has been proved. In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a prize of one million dollars. Recently, the English mathematician Martin Dunwoody of Southampton University announced a proof, of uncertain status. “A proof of the Poincar\u00e9 conjecture? (revised version eight, 11 April 2002)” can be found on the web at\u00a0www.maths.soton.ac.uk\/pure\/preprints.phtml<\/a><\/p>\n VIETORIS DIES AT 110.<\/b>\u00a0The famous topologist Leopold Vietoris, Austria’s oldest citizen, died last Thursday at home at the age of 110.<\/p>\n QUESTIONABLE MATHEMATICS.<\/b>\u00a0John Shonder of Oak Ridge National Laboratory reports that\u00a0The Reuters news service<\/a>, reporting on a press release from the\u00a0British Antarctic Survey<\/a>, claimed on March 19 that<\/p>\n “The Antarctic Peninsular has warmed by 36 degrees Fahrenheit over the past half century, far faster than elsewhere on the ice-bound continent or the rest of the world.”<\/p>\n Shonders continues: Warming up by 36\u00b0 F seemed a little high to me, so I went to the web site of the British Antarctic Survey itself to see what they said:<\/p>\n “During the last 50 years the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 2.5\u00b0 C, much faster than mean global warming.”<\/p>\n Reuters apparently substituted 2.5 into the formula F = (9\/5) C + 32 for converting temperatures (not for converting changes in temperature!).<\/p>\n Readers are invited to submit more examples of questionable mathematics.<\/p>\n NEW CHALLENGE<\/b>\u00a0(Jeff Repka). A sponsor of the Chicago Cubs radio broadcasts will attempt to give away a million dollars this season during each game. Before each game, a fan is selected from a random drawing of entries. Also, a position (excluding pitcher) is selected at random. If the Cubs player who starts the game at that position hits a grand slam in the seventh inning, the fan wins the million. If any other Cubs player hits a grand slam in the seventh inning, the fan wins ten thousand dollars. How safe is the sponsor’s money?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Copyright 2002, Frank Morgan.<\/p>\n Send answers, comments, and new questions by email to\u00a0Frank.Morgan@williams.edu<\/a>\u00a0to be eligible for\u00a0Flatland\u00a0<\/i>and other book awards. Winning answers will appear in the next Math Chat. Math Chat appears on the first and third Thursdays of each month. Prof. Morgan’s homepage is at\u00a0www.williams.edu\/Mathematics\/fmorgan.<\/a><\/p>\n THE MATH CHAT BOOK,<\/a>\u00a0including a $1000 Math Chat Book\u00a0QUEST,\u00a0<\/a>questions and answers, and a list of past challenge winners, is now available from the MAA (800-331-1622).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April 18, 2002 OLD CHALLENGE.\u00a0If you had to disappear, so that no one could find you, where would you go to live? ANSWER\u00a0(Joe Shipman). 1) If I only had a little money, I would become a migrant farm worker or laborer. They have no fixed address, work on a cash basis, and don’t get asked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2965,"featured_media":0,"parent":3459,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3474","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2965"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3475,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3474\/revisions\/3475"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/Morgan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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