Feel free to have a guess via the comments. I will give the answer next week.
This is not a trick question; the sequence is based on a genuine mathematical rule. A word of warning though, although it does not require any complex mathematical knowledge the solution is pretty obscure.
SOLUTION NOW AVAILABLE: CLICK HERE
This rather elegant fact has been going round on Twitter:
“It can’t be true … can it?” Rachael Formula. More info/discussion: http://t.co/gh6Lt76si1 pic.twitter.com/sDc547kEyV
— Cliff Pickover (@pickover) April 15, 2015
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However, there are other examples of this phenomenon…
Here’s a question that caught my eye, in a tweet from @colinthemathmo:
I had a think about this and found that it is actually a deceptively beautiful little puzzle.
Click here for my piece on this problem.
Proposition: {ghost} = ∅
The proof is left as an exorcise.
See more maths puns at The Aperiodical’s Best Maths Pun of 2014 Competition
I have finally finished the follow-up to my previous article on the maths of TV quiz show Pointless:
Like the first part, I have attempted to write the new article such that it is accessible to all. It involves computer simulation and probability.
Merry Christmas to all.
While working on part two of the Pointless article, I wandered over to Twitter and stumbled upon the following problem:
Can a perfect square ever consist of the same string of digits written out twice (such as in 978978 or 46024602)? cc @jamestanton
— Matt Enlow (@CmonMattTHINK) December 4, 2014
This caught my imagination and I did a bit of an investigation. The results were unexpectedly interesting, involving a connection to a mysterious problem at the cutting edge of number theory and a trip off into the numerical stratosphere in search of some fairly large solutions.
You can read my account of the problem here. The maths used here is probably about first year undergraduate level, and the style is certainly more technical than the Pointless article, so come prepared.
So, I’ve written an article on a mathematical sequence arising from the episodes of the BBC TV quiz show Pointless. Honestly.
Hopefully, it is written so as to be understood without any specialist knowledge at all. I have tried to keep the maths as brief and as friendly as possible.*
I have a couple more articles planned (on equally fascinating and inspirational subjects, of course), so keep an eye out for those.
‘Til soon.
*For those who are mathematically inclined, it’s about Markov chains…