Archive
Math Quiz: NYT Learning Network
Through Math for America, I am part of an on-going collaboration with the New York Times Learning Network. My latest contribution, a Test Yourself quiz-question, can be found here:
This problem is related to the increase in on-line education services being offered by established colleges and universities. How much money is there to be made in this business?
Click here to see more in Challenge.
Weavings and Tilings
At the Bridges Math and Art Conference in Portugal I learned quite a bit about mathematics and weaving. One of the many simple and fun ideas I left with was using weaving to explore tilings of the plane.
With some graph paper to plan your tiling, some pre-cut construction paper to assemble them, and some patience to work through the process, you can produce some nice results. Here are some examples from a recent Math for America workshop I led on Math and Art. More images can be seen on my Facebook page.
Click here to see more in Teaching.
Broadway and Dynamic Ticket Pricing
This story in the New York Times describes how dynamic ticket pricing is helping some Broadway shows stay profitable despite an economic downturn and decreasing attendance.
Variable ticket pricing allows theaters to change prices for seats according to week-to-week or even day-to-day trends that represent fluctuations in supply-and-demand.
According to the article, the theater industry experimented with dynamic pricing during some touring company productions and collected enough data to build a pricing model that could predict weekly box-office demand. The success of the model allowed them to implement dynamic pricing on Broadway, where they can now adjust prices to optimize sales and profits.
Dynamic pricing has long been used in the airline industry, where ticket prices seem to fluctuate almost randomly as a function of time. And last year, even the San Francisco Giants experimented a bit with dynamic pricing for their baseball games!
An interesting, and innovative, way to optimize revenue!
Click here to see more in Application.
Math Photo: Spherical Center
You can always count on a Science Center for some spherical architecture.
Click here to see more in Photography.
Geogebra Resources
This is an amazing collection of hundreds (thousands?) of well-designed Geogebra worksheets:
http://dmentrard.free.fr/GEOGEBRA/Maths/accueilmath.htm
The author, Daniel Mentrard, has put together a huge library of mathematics and physics demostrations/explorations that are all available for free.
Although the site is in French, it’s not too hard to browse the many Geogebra resources covering Arithmetique, Art et Maths, Algebre, and much more.
And if you like, you can always run the website through Google Translate.
Click here to see more in Resources.
Black Friday Mathematics
I thought I’d do a little analytic research on Black Friday spending, so I punched up Wolfram Alpha to see what it could tell me.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=average+consumer+spending+U.S.
Although W|A doesn’t seem to have economic data tied to the specific date, it shows that retail spending in the U.S. is about $386 billion per month, or around $13 billion per day.
A report from Businessweek claims that about $20 billion was spent last year on Black Friday. This suggests that around $7 billion more is being spent today!
The increase may be even greater. In its data, Wolfram Alpha includes spending in some categories (motor vehicle and parts dealers–$65.68 billion per month; food and beverage stores–$51.65 billion per month) that might not be counted as “holiday spending.” There may be a more targeted metric for measuring the success of Black Friday; researching, or creating, this measure could be a fun little project.
One nice little feature from Wolfram Alpha was the graph of consumer spending. At the end of each calendar year, there is a sudden spike followed by a steep drop. It’s not too hard to tell the accompanying story for that data!
Click here to see more in Application.
More on NFL Scoring
As the Detroit Lions prepare for their first compelling Thanksgiving Day game in 15 years, I thought I would revisit my pre-season hypothesis that scoring in the NFL would be down in 2011 due to the new kickoff rule.
A quick recap of my argument: the new kickoff rule will result in more touchbacks, which will reduce overall starting field position, which will result in fewer points being scored. An elementary analysis suggested that per-game scoring would be down by about 2 points per game.
The first two weeks of the season saw record-setting offensive production: scoring was actually up by 2.5 points per game! But now, with more than half the 2011 NFL season in the books, the average points-per-game is 44.07. During the 2010 NFL season, the average points-per-game was around 44.16.
A TV analyst recently suggested that scoring decreases as the season progresses, due to factors like weather and injury. Not only does this give me another idea for a math and sports analysis, it also gives me hope that perhaps my pre-season prediction may still come true!
Click here to see more in Sports.
Mr Honner 