math

This years MAA MathFest is in Tampa Florida, which is not a good place to be LGBTQIA+. The linked open letter asks the organizers to provide an online option, and be more honest in their messaging.

Email template and emails to reach out to appear at the end.

i couldn't find an answer by searching it up, can someone please explain this?

You thought the maze looked fun, but now you can’t find your way out. Luckily, mathematics is here to help you escape, says Katie Steckles

Hi there - large numbers are fun and I was learning about the Busy Beaver function which (theoretically) produces unfathomably large numbers by finding the maximum number of 1s written on a blank Turing machine tape out of the set of all n-state Turing machines that halt.

I was wondering if a conceptually more obvious, but larger variation could count the maximum number of steps taken before halting out of all n-state Turing machines that halt?

Would these numbesr not grow faster than the traditional Busy Beaver, since the number of steps will always be greater (or equal?) to the number of 1s written?

Obviously, the halting problem shows that we can't know beforehand if the machines will actually halt, but that issue is common to both versions.

Just curious if there is a reason the problem is not considered this way?

Any googologists out there with insights?

How can one simply calculate the probability of pulling one out of (52!) balls out of a bag TWICE in a row with replacement?

Watching a video about snakes and ladders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ixp5VozIs) inspired me to dust off my markov-chain-memories and calculate the probability of winning the game after N rounds for normal and hardcore (ladders are snakes too) version.
Here's my code: https://gist.github.com/SimonLammer/5f7c5fd4f9e60bba9fd13db0930ff83b

Normal: 61% after 55 rounds; 95% after 144 rounds; 99% after 233 rounds.
Hardcore: 4.5% after 55 rounds; 19% after 144 rounds; 32% after 233 rounds; 66% after 610 rounds; 95% after 1597 rounds; 99% after 2584 rounds.

I expected the hardcore version to be harder, but didn't foresee a difference this big.

How could the number of expected snakes that were taken to win be calculated (aside from computer simulation)?

I wrote this article about the connection between sheafs (which are an important tool in algebraic topology) and Minecraft (as well as similar video games). I once posted about this on Twitter and a bunch of people retweeted it (including some high ranking professors from various universities). Due to a bug in twitters mobile app, this tweet got deleted just now though. So I will repost my original article here :)

P-adics

I am trying to calculate the number of winning Solitaire games based on a paper by Rob Reijtenbach, linked here for your reference: https://theses.liacs.nl/2169. I made a chart, linked in the above URL, which depicts his calculations. I am trying to find the winning percentage based on seven tableau columns, not just three, and out of 52 cards, not just 12. I don't know if this is possible since he used optimizations to not blow up his supercomputer, but I figured that I can ask. Thank you.

Recently noticed this open source math exchange-like site. The community is pretty slow (seems like there's lots of people interested in answering questions, but not so many posting them), which may make it a good target if you've got a good question that isn't getting the attention you'd like.

Curious if anybody knows other alternatives.

Is there a pattern in p?

This is a fantastic interactive simulation exploring the possibilities of a deceptively simple system.

I am not sure if you are aware, but there is already a math community, with around 500 subscribers, on: !/c/[email protected].

Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to redirect there instead?

From what I’ve seen, it seems like P v.s. NP and the Riemann hypothesis are very, very difficult and will take a long time to solve. Instead, what problem has enough pieces of the puzzle discovered to be close to being solved?

-- originally posed by u/curvy-tensor