Search results for: “geek challenge”
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Geek Challenge: Perfectly Random Puzzle
Four groups of 225 random 0’s and 1’s are presented. One of these groups is perfectly random like a coin flip (although calculated from Excel’s RAND() function). The other three groups, while still random, have rules applied which make them not a pure coin flip. Can you spot the perfectly random sample? What methods do you use to…
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Geek Challenge Results: Gravity Race Riddle
Last month's Geek Challenge asked, "What is the quickest way to get from point A to point B?" And they’re off! Path A, the Line, starts with a commanding advantage, having the shortest distance to travel by taking a direct path to the endpoint. However, it is quickly passed by as its acceleration is just too…
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Geek Challenge: Gravity Race Riddle
This month’s Geek Challenge is about the quickest way to get from A to B. An object is released from rest at Point A. Influenced by the constant vertical acceleration of gravity, it slides on a frictionless path to Point B (if it's helpful, imagine a soap box derby car). The following paths represent the…
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Geek Challenge Results: Sombrero Stumper
Dan Freve of DMC wins this month’s Geek Challenge by correctly selecting D as the correct combination! Dan saw that at the maximum radius, 2, Graph A appeared to be zero while graphs B and C were clearly negative. Upon evaluating the formulas, only Formula 2 evaluates to zero at R=2, so 2→A was a…
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Geek Challenge: Sombrero Stumper
This month’s Geek Challenge is in honor of Cinco de Mayo. The traditional Mexican sombrero has an elegant symmetrical shape, and is fun to express mathematically. Your challenge is to match three sombrero graphs with their corresponding functions in cylindrical coordinates . Each graph is plotted from 0<r<2. Graph A Graph B Graph C Is…
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Geek Challenge Results: March Madness Part II
A big question that lingered after looking at the results of the geek challenge was how much luck played into the outcome against how strong any specific entry was over any other. Most entries relied heavily on seeding and used other factors to tweak the effect of the overall seeding. Only Dan Freve chose a…
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Geek Challenge Results: March Madness Part I
Congratulations to Dean Schmitz, who earned victory in the March Madness Geek Challenge thanks to Kentucky’s win over Kansas in the final. He used his superior average bracket score to best Dan Freve, who turned in the tournament’s highest individual bracket. Six of our seven entrants centered their choices primarily around tournament seed, while DMC…
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Geek Challenge: March Madness
This month’s Geek Challenge was created in conjunction with Kevin Ferrigno. The challenge is to pick the winners of this year’s NCAA tournament, not by choosing teams, but by picking the winning formula. You can use this spreadsheet to practice with based on last year’s games. We’ve simplified the process of picking a bracket from…
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Geek Challenge Results: New Year’s Beeramid Part II
The following is a supplement to Geek Challenge Results: New Year’s Beeramid by the Numbers. The partial summation of xy This function can be solved to a polynomial of order y+1 by the method outlined here. Below is a graphical representation of xy. In this graph, y=2, but this is representative of any integer value…
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Geek Challenge Results: New Year’s Beeramid by the Numbers
January’s Geek Challenge questioned the construction of a New Year’s Eve party beer can pyramid. I first encountered this challenge in my freshman year at Marquette. I was building the beeramid with five other students at a band party, some were engineers and math majors and we couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t sleep until…
