Tuesday 18 December 2012

The benefit match and the arithmetic means.

A benefit match: an essay on arithmetic means.


18/12/2012
It's Christmas Day, and it's been held a benefit match on the Misunderstood Mathematicians.

A player is sustituted, and the average age of the team rises 2 years.

With this data, we work out an interesting reflection on arithmetic means and their variations as a function of the group members.

Click here to see our story.


Wednesday 7 November 2012

The paradox of the caterpillar and the lizard.

Does anyone tell the truth? Logical thinking.

07/11/2012

A simple substitution becomes complicated by some players who lie or tell the truth depending on their position in the playing field.

A problem of logical thinking.

Click here to see the story.




Tuesday 16 October 2012

The problem of the ships

Do you dare to count? A forward-and-back problem.

16/10/2012

A modern adaptation of an easy problem of the XIX century which becomes difficult if we don't approach it in the right way

Click here to see our story.



Wednesday 19 September 2012

Sir Alex Ferguson and Champernowne.

The fantastic pencil of Sir Alex Ferguson and the Champernowne constant.

19/09/2012

A practical example set in the World Cup, and based on the memory capacity of an excellent trainer, helps us to introduce the conceptual and practical implications of the Champernowne constant.

Click here to see our story.


Friday 7 September 2012

A theorem, a bus, and a good memory.

The prodigious memory of Van Bommel. Bolzano's theorem.


07/09/2012

Van Bommel boasts an excellent memory. On the way back from a football game does a demonstration of it, but nobody believes him.

Do you want to know if he's lying or telling the truth?

Visit this mathematical puzzle based on the intermediate value theorem and the theorem of Bolzano.

Click here to see the story.


Wednesday 15 August 2012

The grass and the water lilies.

The Juventus and the chinese grass. The rules of three.

15/08/2012

In the pre-season tour of Juventus, the team will play a game with the Chinese team in the Olympic stadium.

It seems that the grass is not in perfect condition for the match to be played.

So grass managers must make a hasty arrangement thereof.

Will they manage to do it in the short time left for the match?

Click here to see the story.


Sunday 5 August 2012

Who kicks better the penalties?

And now, who should kick the penalty? The Simpson's paradox

05/08/2012

It's FIFA Club World Cup 2012. Chelsea's coach hesitates on which player should kick a the penalty, so he looks at the statistics on penalty kicks to find out who is the most effective.

And now he's more troubled than before, because he meets a practical example of the Simpson's paradox. Do you want to help him?

Click here to see the story.




Friday 15 June 2012

Birthday paradox

Eurobirthdays 2012


15/06/2012

Sometimes we admire about some 'strange' coincidences we find in some groups of people.

But there's nothing special at all. It's simply Mathematics..

Click here to see the story.




A 'progressive' problem

The troubled stadium gates


15/06/2012

A problem with the exit gates at the Euro 2012 final in Kyiv leads us to a mathematical teaser based on arithmetic and geometric progressions.

Click here to see our story.

Friday 20 April 2012

Be careful with the flags.

The importance of a flag. Conditioned probability.


20/04/2012

The flags of some supporters that go to the toilets help us to know the country they come from.

Nevertheless, sometimes intuition can lead us to wrong conclusions.

Try to solve our puzzle of conditioned probability.

Click here to see the story.


The ball mustn't fall.

Guardiola: the last training session. Lateral thinking, The problem of the bridge and the lantern.

20/04/2012

FC Barcelona players want to go quickly to the changing room. But Guardiola has prepared for his last training with the team a problem that the players must solve.

It's a renewal of the problem of the lantern and the bridge, very similar to those problems of passing some animals from one side to the other of a river avoiding they eat each other, but adapted to the world of football. Do you dare to solve it?

Click here to see the story.