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Recently, I kayaked with two friends on the River Shannon, which flows southward through the centre of Ireland. Starting at Dowra, Co. Cavan, we found it easy paddling until we reached Lough Allen, when the going became very tough. It was an uphill struggle.
Could we really be going uphill while heading downstream? That seems bizarre but, in a certain sense, it is possible.
That’s Maths in the Irish Times this week ( TM025 ) is about the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), which takes place in Santa Marta, Columbia next week.
Continue reading ‘Matholympic Heroes’
Hailstones, in the process of formation, make repeated excursions up and down within a cumulonimbus cloud until finally they fall to the ground. We look at sequences of numbers that oscillate in a similarly erratic manner until they finally reach the value 1. They are called hailstone numbers.
Continue reading ‘The Ups and Downs of Hailstone Numbers’
That’s Maths in the Irish Times this week ( TM024: search for “thatsmaths” ) deals with perspective in art and its mathematical expression as projective geometry.
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