My Jiu Jitsu Journey
Canadian Bianca Andreescu and Rafael Nadal won the female and male U.S. Open Saturday. For most of the weekend, I thought about what it takes to win the U.S. Open. Players must win 7 consecutive matches in a row to win this tournament. To win an individual match, a male player must be the first … Continue reading Winning the U.S. Open
For the first time ever, I have joined a Fantasy Football League. There are 12 of us in the league and we all roll jiu jitsu which should add an interesting dynamic. This weekend, we drafted and set the lineup. Also this weekend, a very interesting game was suggested by FiveThirtyEight's "The Riddler" called Castles. … Continue reading Castles
I stumbled upon a really cool mathematical anomaly that is easy to understand and can be appreciated by almost anyone. The game begins by starting with any whole number greater than zero. To illustrate, let's choose my birth year of 1977. Now, we will create a sequence from this number in the following way. Add … Continue reading The Magical 1 and 42
Every Fall semester a colleague and myself develop a mathematical scavenger hunt for several competing high schools that come to visit our campus. This year, we chose the story "Ready Player One" as a theme with a final puzzle modeled from The Magical Labyrinth, a 2009 award winning game that involves a hidden maze of walls. … Continue reading Mathematical Scavenger Hunt
The Fall 2018 semester is less than 2 weeks away, and so what better time to talk to you about drying some Apricots. This is a very basic problem that I hope many of you can solve on your own. For those of you that cannot, I believe you will be able to understand the … Continue reading Dried Apricots
The Shaw Show 