CONTAGION: How JUDE LAW got the PANDEMIC MATHS wrong!

MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig MathsPig …………………………………………………. with Kerry Cue

Hellooooo My Little Sweeties,

There is so much maths you can do with m&ms, it’s hard to believe there is any other sort of maths.

You can study:

Counting, times tables, set theory, Bar graphs, Fractions, % and decimals, Mean, median, mode, and parabolas (using a really cool peg-powered catapult).

But my favouritest ,developed by Patrick Len, is using m&ms to demonstrate half life in radioactive substances and therefore write an exponential equation.

m+m ACTIVITY:

Throw a fixed no. m&ms on a table. Mathspig chose 128 m&ms for a very good reason. Eat the ones with the m showing. Count remainder. Throw again. Eat the ones with the m showing. Count remained. Keep doing this. You will end up with results like the following. (Not identical as chance is involved)

Wow! m&m’s and exponential equations. How yummy is that!!!!!!

More yummy maths:

m+m maths 1: find the volume using m+ms!

m+m maths 2: Guess, NO, calculate the number of m+ms in a jar!

m+m maths 3: how many m+ms will kill you?

m+m maths 4: How many m+ms will kill my dog?

m+m maths 5: how many m+ms will kill my cat?

m+m maths 6: How many m+ms will kill my pet rat?

m+ms maths 7: how many m+ms will kill my pet mouse?

Mmmmmmm! Can’t talk. Face full of chocolate.

Bye bye

Mathspig

The MATHS St GOOGLE MAPS Challenge

Reading Undiluted Hocus-Pocus, the autobiography of Martin Gardener, mathematician and magician (He wrote the puzzle column for scientific America for years), Mathspig was bemused to read that statistician William Feller lived on Random Road in Princeton.

Mathspig totally confused Google Maps by searching for so many Maths streets, roads, drives, lanes and crescents. Mr Google began to think Mathspig was stuck on Infinity Street or lost at Cartesian Place.

What place boasts the most mathematical street names in the world (so far):

1. Paris

There are nearly 100 Parisian streets, squares, boulevards etc. named after mathematicians and not necessarily French mathematicians.

 

Street names include:

Rue Laplace

Rue Bernoulli

Rue Newton

There is, surprisingly, no street named after Fourier in Paris. But the street on which he was born in Auxerre has been renamed after this great mathematician.

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2. Salisbury, South Australia

Surprisingly, the most ‘mathsy’ place Mathspig has discovered so far is an outer suburb of Adelaide, south Australia. Maths street names include:

Equation Rd

Parallell Ave

Chord Rd

Log Rd

Tangent Ave

Quadrant Ave      

Meridian Rd

Degree Rd

Decimal Rd

Latitude Rd

Co-ordinate RD

Fibonacci in Budafest
Not by name, by design.

3. New York, NY, USA

You can’t get lost in New York. It is a grid city.

Eg. 812 East 23^rd St means No. 12, block 8 East of Broadway.

There is a Sine Rd in Auburn New York,

but it’s not this one. Pity!

Here is a fun Maths exercise to get Middle School students thinking about maths.

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Ans. 1. Massey, NZ. 2. TRIANGLE. 3. State Ave 4. 0.7 miles, 1.1 km. 5. It has 3 right angles 6. 0.4 miles, 0.6 km. 7. No. The triangle is not a right angle triangle. 8. David W Carter Hight School) 9. Only 2 ARITHMETIC CR, Landon, SC and ARITHMETIC Dr, Salem, MA. 10. O.4 miles, 0.6 km.

Maths Cure for Wolverine

Jackie from Straight Ace Learning ( Maths & Movies ) asked Mathspig to come up with a formula for Wolverines super fast super healing powers. He can regenerate or heal in 5 seconds. In the latest Wolverine Movie he becomes mortal ….

Wolverine Facts:

No. Cells in a human/X-man Body

= 75 trillion cells  = 75 x 10¹²

(Mid-point of 60-90 trillion cells cited on the fab AskaBiologist website)

Imagine Wolverine is slashed/shot/wounded in the abdomen.

Human Trunk

= 44% of the body.

(See Body Segment Data here)

Estimate Cell Damage

= 1/4 of trunk = 44/4 = 11% = 0.11

Number Cells Damaged

= 75 x 10¹² x 0.11 = 8.25 x 10¹²

You will need your Web 2 Scientific Calculator (See diag below).

This is what the calculation looks like on the WEB 2 Scientific Calculator. 

Tell MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS that

 log₂X

is just REVERSE ENGINEERING of 

2^x

 

 

WHY JUDE LAW CAN’T DO MATHS

It’s not often that we have British actor Jude Law ( above) explaining maths to us, but in the new Hollywood film CONTAGION

he demonstrates how quickly a deadly virus could spread … (1.17 point on trailer)

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Jude Law plays the colourful blogger Alan Krumwiede. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character dies and Matt Damon tries to save his daughter. (See pics)

   

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Krumwiede says ‘ On day one there were 2 people, then 4, then 16 … in three months it’s a billion. That’s where we’re heading.’ Is he right?

LETS CHECK IT OUT MATHSPIGS

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.Now this bug is highly contagious, but Krumweide’s estimates start high and end low. In the film he says the number of infected people will grow according to the series 2, 4, 16, 256 and then a number Mathspig,um, missed. (I was munching popcorn.)

This is wrong. According to this progression by Day 3 each person must go out an infect 16 other people. By Day 4 they must infect 256 people each. By Day 5 they must infect 65,536 people each. That is a BIG cough.

Then he claims that in 3 months or 90 days 1 billion people will be infected. That’s so sweet. If the Gweny bug was so highly  contagious the human race wouldn’t last that long. Oddly, however, this number has synergy with the TWILIGHT VAMPIRES.

Even if each germ-riddled person infected only 1 other healthy person each day, this is how long we would last:

You may need to use the WEB 2.0 calculator to solve this problem.

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Not everyone on earth would die, of course. As the numbers drop so do the infection rates. Meanwhile, some people in remote areas would not get infected and some people would have immunity and that’s when the plot gets hot, HOT, HOT!!

12 minute Maths Guru

Meet Salman Khan. He has put free maths on-line.

This article on Salman appeared in The Sunday Times, UK, 12 JUN 2011.

Salman, 28, started putting tutes online for his 12-year-old niece, Nadia, and things grew. So far the Kahn Academy’s claim to fame are:

* Over 2,400 videos including hundreds and hundreds of 12-minute maths tutes

* Over 63,000,000 lessons delivered.

* Bill Gates kids use the site.

* A staff of 1 with funding from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

* Tutes on Biology, Chemistry and Physics too.

You can look up the maths tutes by topic @ The Khan Academy.

Or search topics on Youtube eg. Introduction to Conics Khan

Why Does Mathspig like The Kahn Academy? Because it’s:

1. Free.

2. Quick

3. Clear

4. Low-key

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Salman gives digital chalk-and-talk tutes like a teacher. He hand draws the equations and graphs. He uses a calculator from time to time, but he tends not to use whizz bang spreadsheet graphs or perfectly presented textbook equations. It’s a bit wobbly and it’s all coming from Salman’s head.

And students like this approach. It makes maths look do-able.

Go, Salman.

Mathspig thinks you are just GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!

 Australia’s Year 7 – 12 Maths Curriculum is already on-line and free, funded by McDonald’s. See What are maths teachers for, sir?

The tutes on Maths Online are produced by Aussie Maths teachers and they are very good. Mathspig, of course, imagined the quadratic function tutes might look something like this:

Twilight Maths II: Will Vampires rule the world?

In Stephanie Meyer’s the Twilight series there are good Vampires and Bad Vampires. Edward Cullen and the other Vampires in the Cullen Covern are ethical Vampires. (See earlier post: Fang it to me! : Twilight Maths) The only eat animal blood. Edward falls in love with Bella a human. The baddie Vampires are James, Laurent (pictured) and Victoria.

Twilight Vampires, as with all vampires, can turn a human into a vampire by biting them. IN the Twilight mythology a vampire injects a venom into their victim and, depending on how much venom is injected the victim will turn into vampire in 3 – 5 days.

Vampires who drink human blood have red eyes. So freshly made vampires have bright red eyes due to the human blood already in their veins. Vampires who drink animal blood have yellow eyes.

How long would it take one Vampire, say James, to turn the whole population of the earth into vampires? We can work it out, mathspigs.

On the first night James goes out and bites a human. Now there are two vampires. Each night the vampires go out their numbers double.

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These calculations were updated for clarity on 21 OCT 2011 after I’d worked on my JUDE LAW CAN’T DO MATHS post. Now in the Twilight Series it takes 3 days for a  human to turn into a vampire. So we will assume that James and his rapidly growing covern go out every 3rd night to feast on human blood.

How many days will it take one bad Twilight vampire to take over the world (Population 6.8 Billion. See World Population Clock US Census Bureau ) ? You work it out. But here is a hint.

I suspect the Cullen Family are smart vampires because they only drink animal blood.
Unless, animals also turn into vampires and we are over run by vampire squirrels, vampire poodles, vampire canaries and more.