I confess to being fascinated by Taylor Swift for far more than her music. I think she is an extraordinary person for her philanthropy, her speaking out for victims of sexual assault, her advocacy of artists' ownershi...

      If you are a fan of the television series "The Big Bang Theory", then you know Sheldon often wears a shirt with 73 on it.       In the tenth episode of the fourth season of The B...

Rene Descartes walks into a bar, by Jerry Tuttle I recently told the old Rene Descartes joke to a math class: Rene Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Would you like a beer?" Descartes pauses for a moment and then replies, "I think...

Mind reader game, and Unicode symbols, by Jerry Tuttle Perhaps you've seen this Mind Reader game? Think of a two-digit positive whole number, such as 54. Subtract each of the two digits from your number, such as 54 - 5 - 4 = 45, and call 45 the RES...

Text analysis of 2024 US Presidential convention speeches, by Jerry Tuttle       Can an actuary / mathematician / data analyst say anything objective and data-oriented about the 2024 US presidential campaign? &nbsp...

Is the Mona Lisa thinking about irrational numbers? by Jerry Tuttle       As a math teacher I sometimes share the following problem-solving strategy: If you are really stuck on a problem, let it sit, come back the ...

The distribution has changed; and pretty tables in base R, by Jerry Tuttle       So you spent hours, or maybe days, cranking out thousands of numbers, you submit it to your boss just at the deadline, your boss quickly peruses your exhibit of numbers, points to a single number and says, "...

Radar charts and five-tool baseball players by Jerry Tuttle       I was looking for an opportunity to practice with radar charts and I came across an article on five-tool baseball players, so this seemed like a pe...

Something a llttle different: Hexbin maps by Jerry Tuttle       I recently became acquainted with hexbin maps, so I thought I would experiment with one. In a hexbin map, each geographical region is represented by an equall...

Taylor Swift and Data Analysis. by Jerry Tuttle Who will be the most talked-about celebrity before, during, and after the Super Bowl?

In the US we think of Minneapolis and St. Paul as the Twin Cities, but Ben Olin, author of Math with Bad Drawings, https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/, posed this data science question: Which U.S. cities are the true twin cities? He imposed three c...

Just what is a lord-a-leaping? Well, what is a lord? A lord is a title of nobility, usually inherited, that exists in the UK and other countries. And those lords like to leap, especially during the twelve days of Christmas. The song the Twel...

      A few months ago I used R to investigate black hole word numbers in the English language. A friend suggested there are probably black hole word numbers in other languages. There are only three other languages that I ...

      With the Barbie movie coming out, I think it's time to review Barbie and math.       If the original Barbie doll were an actual woman, she would be 5'9" tall, have a 39-inch bust, 18-inch waist, 33-inch hips, a size 3 shoe, a weight of 110 pounds, a BMI of 16.24, and perhaps would ...

Many people know March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of π (using the month, day date format). I just learned that July 22 is celebrated as Pi Approximation Day (using the day/month date ...

I am getting tired of these little pictorial numerical puzzles with the four equations, like one where three chickens equals 60, one chicken plus two plates of two eggs per plate equals 26, and so on, until the final equation is to evaluate some ma...

The government doesn't want you to know about this, but I have discovered it and I will share this with a few close friends: There is a black hole in the number line, and it's at number 4. Every word in the English language will eventually fall into ...

These drinking glasses are too short! Some of my reinsurance and math teacher friends may remember that when I am out of town and having an adult beverage with friends, I have been known to stare at the drinking glass and say something like, "I don'...

I don't know about you, but I get tired of seeing column charts and pie charts. It's not difficult to create a few more interesting chart types once in a while. Whether these are relevant for a particular audience and truly display your message is a different question. I wanted ...

Find the next number in the sequence by Jerry Tuttle Between ages two and four, most children can count up to at least ten. If you ask your child, "What number comes next after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?" they will probably say "6." But to math nerds, any number can be the next number … Continue ...