Introduction After writing a post about the Monty Hall problem the other day, a friend of mine asked if I’d write one about another famous, counterintuitive probability problem known as the birthda...

Introduction The field of probability is rife with counterintuitive results that show how necessary the rigor of mathematics is to correct understanding of certain situations. This post will be abo...

Introduction Derivatives are used across many different fields of engineering, physics and mathematics to analyze the ways that continuous quantities change. Although the definition of derivative t...

Introduction In this post I thought I’d write about two fun mathematical puzzles I came across recently (in Martin Gardner’s book Mathematical Puzzles). Neither requires much mathematical sophistic...

Introduction While watching some lectures on distributed/cloud computing, I came across distributed hash table, which is a way to implement a hash table (if you’re unfamiliar, see here) distributed...

Introduction Often when I decide to write a post about some theorem or concept, the best are those that are both deep and easy to explain. These are admittedly hard to come by, but upon doing a bit...

Introduction In this post I want to show a few different ways of proving that $e^{i\theta} = \cos\theta + i\sin\theta$. It’s a cute illustration of how it’s often possible and rather cool to look a...

Introduction In this post, I want to talk about a mathematical construct I read about last night that is just downright fascinating. It’s a great example of the way math can help us make sense of t...

Introduction While I was in college, I spent a few semesters TAing Calc II (Calc BC if you do it in high school). Both when I took the class and when I TAed it, I found the part of the course devot...

I was talking to my dad the other day about the advantages and disadvantages of memorizing things and we got into an interesting discussion, the essence of which I thought would make a great topic ...