Ask Math Anything Topics from April 2020

debbie

4/1/20

What percent is reliable?
How do you use equations to solve a word problem?
Why is it so hard to make a vaccine?
Why is there a Youtube lag?
How do you figure out what percent of people liked?
How to make math not boring
Is it possible to go back in time by flying west?
Riddle: I live in the west-most state that is on the east coast
What if humanity went extinct before time travel was possible?
Why haven't we been visited by aliens yet?
What is anti-matter?
\(E = mc^2\) What does it mean?
How much energy is there in a \(1\) kg rock, moving at \(10 \frac{\text{m}}{\text{s}}?\)
Don't be evil and hurt the world

debbie

4/2/20

Do you know Ramanujan?
Coincidence in \( 1729 = 12^3 + 1^3\) and \( 1729 = 9^3 + 10^3 \)
Solve for \(x: 1^x = 2\)
1^{0.5}, 0^{0.5}
Generating functions
Where is the center of the universe?
How fast are we moving? How fast is a point on the surface of earth moving?
Approximations for \(\pi: \frac{22}{7}\)
Would you get dizzy if you were at the north pole?
The barrier of how fast a plane can go
Knot theory and string theory
How to draw a Fibonacci spiral
Why is \( \tau \) (tau) better than \(\pi\) (pi)?
\(e^{2*\pi*i}\) and frequencies
What's your favorite food?
What's the volume of a potato?
How do you find the derivative of a function?
Catalan numbers

debbie

4/3/20

How was \(\pi\) discovered?
How to draw a perfect circle
Angle bisectors of a triangle go through the same point, at the center of the inscribed circle
How can I study for MATHCOUNTS?
If you have a cure for coronavirus, how would you distribute it?
How do you know so much?
What is a wormhole?
Can you explain speed, time, and distance?
Can you explain how to cut a triangle into pieces, take a piece out, and rearrange it so it is the same size?
How do you remember to divide by 2 whenever you're trying to find the area of a triangle?
Can you talk about 3-D-printing face masks?
What is the biggest prime number?
Proof of the fact that there are an infinite number of primes
How are you able to answer everything?
Is \(\pi\) even or odd?
"This sentence is false." Is this true or false?

debbie

4/4/20

Why do you wear a blue shirt all the time?
Why are primes called prime?
What are you doing right now?
How to learn combinatorics
What keyboard do you use for coding?
When do you think that COVID-19 will slow down, based on how things are currently going?
Why don't we split the world in half, one for the infected people, and the other for the not infected people?
Do you like music?
Who is your idol?

debbie

4/7/20

Will you keep doing this after COVID-19?
My eyes hurt after looking at screens
When will your APP be in the APP store?
Why is 42 special?
Why is \(6\) a perfect number? Why is \(8\) a deficient number?
Fermat's Last Theorem
What is math and what is time?
Why isn't Earth perfectly spherical?
Can you solve a Rubik's cube with math?
How do you entertain yourself when you are bored?
Where are you parents from?
Can you take off your glasses?
How to prepare for the IMO
Do you like the name COVID-19 or coronavirus?
What is your time zone?
Did you see Singapore's open-source app?

debbie

4/8/20

Chess ratings
Three logicians go into a restaurant...
What do you like to eat?
Sine and multiplicative inverses
The NOVID app

debbie

4/9/20

Converting from celsius to fahrenheit
Combinatorical game theory
NOVID
How many hours did you do math for when you were a toddler or a child?
Why do you like people?
Pigeonhole Principle and why phone numbers have 7 digits
What sparked the idea for you to give speeches around the world for math?

debbie

4/10/20

Can you say a math joke?
Why is math either too hard or too easy?
Do you have an AoPS account?
What did you do in your free time before coronavirus?
The missing dollar trick
Which is harder, AMC or MATHCOUNTS?
Which website should I use for math?
What are different types of classes and which do you prefer?
Does \( \sum_{n =1}^{\infty} \frac{k}{1 + k^2} \) converge? If so, then to what value?
Does \( \sum \frac{1}{n^2}\) converge?
How many different iPhone passwords are possible?
Why is a 2-digit password not so good?
Show that \( p^2 -1\) is factorable by \(24\) if \(p \geq 5\)

debbie

Sat 4/11/20 Live stream topics

How do you do math without staring at a screen or paper?
How can we get a good future?
How do you deal with rejection and failure?
How can a satellite go as fast as the Earth?
Will we ever blow up the moon?
Do you think COVID will end the world?
How can we motivate ourselves?
Thoughts about AI
How do mathematicians make money?
How many times do you go grocery shopping a week?
How to switch interest from English to math

debbie

4/18/20

Arthur Benjamin
Do you play an instrument?
How did you get into Caltech?
What keyboard do you use?
Was your dream job always math?
How to tell parents that grades are not the most important thing
How to encourage my son to love math?
How to get my mom to love math?

debbie

Mon 4/20/20

Simple derivatives using the example of the sequence \(2, 10, 30, 68, 130 \text{ } (2n^2 + n)\)
How to find a formula besides finding a pattern
How much gas does it take to go around the F1 2019 track once
How are cereal boxes made?
What does bluetooth have to do with math?
How to use Prof. Loh's dice against your friends
How to protect computers from coronavirus
Which digit is more important, 1 or 0?
How is math used in sports?
What is \(\sqrt{6 \sqrt{ 6 \sqrt{ 6 \sqrt{6 \ldots }}}} \) ?
What is the square root of \(i?\)

debbie

Tue 4/21/20 Live stream topics

Prove why time multiplied by speed equals distance
Bob the unpredictable cat walks on a 1 mile racetrack at 1 mph. Is it possible to calculate how long it will take him to do 1 lap?
Converting units
Standard deviation and calculating the spread of the normal hump ( \( \sqrt{n \times 0.5 \times 0.5}\))
Cube root of \(i\)
Are there any math tournaments or shows that you recommend?
What is the probability that a coin will land on its side?
Why is the economy going down?
If every person that each of us told someone about this livestream, and each of those people tell one person, and each of those people tell one person, and so on, how many people should each of us tell in order to get 10,000 people here?
If the IMO questions are getting harder gradually throughout the years do you think that the value/weight of an older IMO medal is less?
Where are you filming this stream from?
Are you lonely?

debbie

Wed 4/22/20 Live stream topics

Is there a strategy for rock paper scissors, or is it just a random game?
Who is the smartest person in the world?
What is the most mathematical board game?
Which square in Monopoly is the most commonly landed on?
How is a random number generator really random?
Strategy for winning tic-tac-toe
Solve \( \sqrt{-x} = -1 \)
How to win money on the lottery
Prove that \( \pi = 4 \) using Minecraft / pixel art analogy
How do real-time games sync so well, even when a player(s) have high ping, and are far away? Why do movies take so much longer to load in comparison?
How does a computer program synchronize time?

debbie

Thu 4/23/20 Live stream topics

What is the units digit of \( 2^{859}?\)
How does noise cancelling work?
How many street names are there?
What happens if the Earth stops spinning?
What is the chance that the virus goes away before the school year starts?
How to win at \(4 \times 4\) tic-tac-toe
Perfect information games
Game tree

debbie

Mon 4/27/20 Live stream topics

Hex codes and binary
\(15\) in base \(2\)
\(10110110 \times 2\) in binary
Sound waves are stored in a 16-bit format
What's the largest 16-bit integer? (15 ones, \( 11111 11111 11111 = 2^{15} - 1\)
How much money is there in the world?
How can I not get glasses even though I'm staring at a screen every day?
How can you use math to aim in a game?
How to get an isosceles triangle (if projectile is the same speed as the runner)
Circle of Apollonius
Why is airplane food so bad?
Which temperature is the same whether it's in celsius or fahrenheit?
How common is my birthday?

debbie

Tue 4/28/20 Live stream topics

A game where two people take turns choosing numbers. The first person to get three of their numbers adding to 15 wins
Does coding help with math?
Finding the area of a nautilus shell using Fibonacci numbers
How many prime numbers are there from 0 to your age?
How can you figure out how many prime numbers there are between 2 and 2500 in a fast way?
Ramanujan's numbers, and the sum of two cubes in two ways
Sieve of Erastothenes
Do you believe that the UFO sighted by Air Force fighters is real?
If one stays in the sky, after 12 hours, can he get to the other side of the world?

debbie

Wed 4/29/20 Live stream topics

What are the uses of ratios? "I think they're useless and don't make sense."
Sound wave graph of a microphone
Signal-to-noise ratios
What does the opposite of noise sound like?
How to remove a fear of math
How to predict when the volcano on Hawaii will erupt
Do math professors or math majors have a friendly rivalry with other majors?
How do you determine the last two digits of \(2^{2020}?\)
Why do math contests always use the current year in their problems?
What is the remainder when we divide \( 3^{703}\) by \(80?\)
What does it take to get into the U.S. national math olympiad team?
What to do to prepare for math contests

debbie

Thu 4/30/20 Live stream topics

How do we know \( \pi\) is real?
How to calculate \( \pi\) using division
If you have a certain number of numbers that add up to a certain number, can you calculate the average biggest number?
Gamma function
Can every 2-D geometry question be solved by 3-D geometry?
Do you believe in aliens?
Suppose that 20% of a number is 17. Find 20% of 17% of the number.
Can something be 1 dimension?
How long would a bumblebee take to travel around the world?
Riddle: There are 3 switches outside for lights in the attic. You may flip the switches and make one trip to the attic. Match each light with its switch.
What's the probability of getting 5 heads and 5 tails if you flip a coin 10 times?
David's parents have three sons: Snap, Crackle and what's the name of the third son?
Good books for AIME preparation
Why are zeroes of functions interesting to study?
If a straight line passes through the curve \(y= x^2,\) why are the two interceptions multiplied together equal to the y-intercept?