Did you solve it? Art thou smarter than Shakespeare?
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 15 April - 16:00
The answers to today’s problems
Earlier today I set you these puzzles, set by the author of Much Ado About Numbers, a new book about mathematics in Shakespeare’s day.
1. Hours and hours
Continue reading...Cups v grams: why can’t American and British cooks agree on food measurements?
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 2 April - 13:35 · 1 minute
Europe’s weights system is baffling for American cooks used to volumes and cups, but will metric’s accuracy eventually tip the scales?
Like most Americans, Samin Nosrat grew up in a home with cup measures in the kitchen. That said, they didn’t always get used. “My mom taught me in a more ‘old world’ way,” she says – measuring the water to cover rice with one of her knuckles, for instance. Nosrat, the author of cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat and presenter of the Netflix show with the same name, has built a career on what she calls “sensory-guided cooking” – helping home cooks to build culinary instincts by understanding how ingredients behave – and so admits to having “a somewhat tortured relationship with measurements”. But as a recipe writer, she describes herself as “neurotic”. “If I’m going to write recipes which are clear and which work,” says Nosrat, “it just makes sense to use scales. I have three sets.”
There is a chasm between Europe and America’s kitchen cultures. The fundamental difference is that Americans use volume, not weight, to make measurements in their kitchens. Cooking with cups is volume-based and relies heavily on visual cues – everyone knows what a cup of granulated sugar looks like; less so 200g or 7.1oz – while the metric system is weight-based. “The issue isn’t that Americans weigh things differently,” says Sarah Chamberlain, a writer who Americanises British cookbooks for the US market. “It’s that most of them don’t weigh things at all.”
Continue reading...Did you solve it? Lewis Carroll for insomniacs
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 18 March - 16:57
The answers to today’s puzzles
Earlier today I set these puzzles by Lewis Carroll, who as well as writing books like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , was also a prolific puzzle setter.
1. The Chelsea Pensioners
Continue reading...Can you solve it? Lewis Carroll for insomniacs
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 18 March - 06:59
It’s not all about Alice
Todays puzzles are all penned by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and appear in a delightful miscellany of his non-Alice scribblings, Lewis Carroll’s Guide for Insomniacs , curated by LC superfan Gyles Brandreth. They may be oldies, but they are goodies!
1. The Chelsea Pensioners
Continue reading...Did you solve it? The word game at the cutting edge of computer science
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 16:45
The answer to today’s puzzles
Earlier today I set you three examples of a word puzzle that illuminates one of the smash hits of theoretical computer science. (To read about this result, the PCP theorem , please check out the original post .)
In the puzzle, crossword-style clues each point to a vertical column. The answer to each clue is a three-letter word, made up from the three letters that the clue points to.
Continue reading...Can you solve it? The word game at the cutting edge of computer science
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 07:10
A crossword puzzle with a twist
Today’s puzzle illuminates one of the smash hits of theoretical computer science, a mind-boggling result that left even experts in the field gobsmacked .
We’ll get to that result (the PCP theorem ) later. But first, to the challenge!
Continue reading...Disadvantaged pupils further behind in maths since Covid, English study finds
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 00:01
Union criticises education recovery funding as attainment gap in primary school pupils grows to 8.7 months
Children from low-income families in England are further behind their peers in maths than they were before the pandemic, research suggests.
The attainment gap for disadvantaged primary school pupils in maths has grown from an average of 6.9 months to 8.7 months, the study by the thinktank the Education Policy Institute (EPI) and the software firm Renaissance Learning has found.
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Introduction
ravi · Tuesday, 27 February - 10:06
#Introduction time. My name is Ravi and I am from India. I am a #freesoftware and #privacy activist. I am a part of #prav (https://prav.app), a chat app focused towards mass adoption of #XMPP.
I have studied postgraduate in #mathematics from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata and I currently work as a freelancer at artofproblemsolving.com. Additionally, I contribute to #debian, #openstreetmap and #libreoffice.
I blog at https://ravidwivedi.in . Hope to meet nice people here.
Can you solve it? Are you smarter than a 12-year-old?
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 5 February - 07:10
Teasers for top tweens
Today’s problems come from Axiom Maths , a charity that that takes high-attaining primary school children and provides them with maths enrichment during secondary school.
One of Axiom’s main activities is to organise ‘maths circles’, in which small groups of pupils get together to tackle fun problems. Such as the ones below, which are aimed at children aged 11/12, and form the basis for further explorations.
Agent 001 gives a present to the agent who gives a present to agent 002
Agent 002 gives a present to the agent who gives a present to agent 003
Agent 003 gives a present to the agent who gives a present to agent 004
and so on, until
Agent 009 gives a present to the agent who gives a present to agent 001
Continue reading...