Just a couple of weeks ago, a new prime number was found by computers: this is 257,885,161 – 1, a number with more than 17 million digits. Wow! Known as a Mersenne prime, which is a prime number of the [… more]
Did you miss the golden moment of the year? For most parts of the world, it’s come and gone; but if you are in the west coast of USA, that time is fast approaching… If you have read my previous [… more]
Dec 12 2012
Did you see this on your digital clock about an hour ago? The time 12:12:12 has come and gone on this special day 12/12/12 that is today. Another rare moment, much like the one on 11/11/11 at 11:11:11, which we [… more]
As this post goes online, the local time is exactly 11:11:11 on this special day 11/11/11. This is a rare moment — while this string of identical digits flash by you, dream of things that you really want to do, [… more]
Jun 09 2011
Have you heard of perfect numbers? Six is the first perfect number. It is regarded as “perfect” because it is equal to the sum of its proper divisors (or aliquot sum); these divisors include 1 but exclude the number itself. [… more]
Chapter 2 of “The Pythagorean Theorem — A 4000 Year History” tells us that Pythagoras founded a school when he settled in Greek around 530 BCE. His students — the Pythagoreans — studied mainly philosophy, mathematics and astronomy. The Pythagoreans [… more]
Many of us would have learned about the Pythagoras’ Theorem during Maths class in our secondary school days. Yup, it’s that famous a2 + b2 = c2 equation that relates to the sides of a right-angled triangle. The diagram on [… more]
May 12 2011
Ask any child what “1 + 1” is, and without hesitation you’d get the answer “2”. Likewise, an adult will most definitely respond with the same. But if you think deeper, there are other answers that would be correct as [… more]
