Category: Math Puzzles
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A Classic Maths Puzzle: How Many Cats Are Needed?
If three cats catch three rats in three minutes, how many cats will catch 100 rats in 100 minutes? I will present to you the standard answer to this, which I am sure most of you have come across countless times. After that, I’d like to offer you an alternate perspective regarding this puzzle. Once…
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Should You Roll Or Not?
Two bullets are loaded into a gun’s round barrel consecutively. The barrel has a capacity of 6. The gun is fired once, but no bullet is shot. So does rolling the barrel (shuffling) before next shot increase the probability of firing a bullet? Once again, this is a good moment to pause the article and…
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So How Does The Koch Snowflake Have Finite Area?
Following part one of the series, we will now look at the area of a Koch snowflake starting with an equilateral triangle with a side length of 1. Give the problem a try before jumping in for the solution! Area Let’s look at what happens in the first iteration We are adding one new triangle for each…
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What If Even Your Point of View Is Uncertain? Quantum Physics Says It Can Be.
Picture yourself standing on a railway platform as a trolley rolls by. A young girl riding inside lets go of a bright red ball. From her perspective, the ball simply drops straight to the floor. But from where you stand, the ball traces a graceful arc before it lands. You are both watching the very…
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Even A 6 Year-Old Kid Can Solve This In 7 Seconds. But Can You?
The area of a triangle is 1/2(b)(h), where b is the base and h is the height. What that means is that a triangle can have the same area with many different shapes. This simple but insightful puzzle can be solved in under 7 seconds if only you know well enough about triangles ⏳ Personally…
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How Does The Koch Snowflake Have Infinite Perimeter?
What is the perimeter of the above Koch snowflake starting from an equilateral triangle with side length 1? This is part one of a two-part series on Koch snowflake. Stay tuned for the next post on finding the area! Give this problem a try before jumping in for the solution! Introduction The Koch snowflake is…
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Student Finds Embarrassing Error in Cambridge Exam
The Cambridge IGCSE is the international equivalent of England’s GCSE, a qualification typically taken by students aged 14 to 16. Recently, a student on Reddit’s AskMath community questioned the official mark scheme for one of the exam’s questions, believing it contained an error. Many other users examined the problem and agreed that the mark scheme…
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Are You Smart Enough To Get Into Cambridge University?
This maths challenge comes from the University of Cambridge. It’s a test for students looking to study computer science and maths-related subjects at the prestigious institution. Specifically, we are tasked with finding the minimum value of a function. There are 6 choices but only 1 is the correct answer. Once again, this is a good…
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What’s the Area between the Curve and the x-axis?
This is the Witch of Agnesi, a bell-shaped mathematical curve named after the Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi, famous because its strange name comes from a translation error. If you are brave enough to solve the challenge, read on! Construction and Challenge The figure above shows a circle of radius a centered at the point…