Sprouts is a simple and delightfully subtle pencil-and-paper game for two players. The game is set up by marking a number of spots on a page. Each player makes a move by drawing a curve that joins two spots, or that loops from a spot back to itself, without crossing any lines drawn earlier, and … Continue reading Sproutology
Month: August 2012
Analemmatic Sundials
This week’s That’s Maths article, TM003, describes the analemmatic sundial on the East Pier in Dun Laoghaire. An article in Plus Magazine, by Chris Sangwin and Chris Budd, gives a description of the theory of these sundials and instructions on how to build one. A script to design an analemmatic sundial, written by Alexander R. Pruss, … Continue reading Analemmatic Sundials
Napier’s Nifty Rules
Spherical trigonometry is not in vogue. A century ago, a Tripos student might resolve a half-dozen spherical triangles before breakfast. Today, even the basics of the subject are unknown to many students of mathematics. That is a pity, because there are many elegant and surprising results in spherical trigonometry. For example, two spherical triangles that … Continue reading Napier’s Nifty Rules
Google PageRank
This week's That's Maths article, at TM002, describes how Google's PageRank software finds all those links when you enter a search word, by solving an enormous problem in linear algebra. A comprehensive description of PageRank is given in the book Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings, by Amy N. Langville & … Continue reading Google PageRank
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