Related papers: My Favorite Math Jokes
Humor is an inherently social phenomenon, with humorous utterances shaped by what is socially and culturally accepted. Understanding humor is an important NLP challenge, with many applications to human-computer interactions. In this work we…
We explore automatically predicting which Wordle games Reddit users find amusing. We scrape approximately 80k reactions by Reddit users to Wordle games from Reddit, classify the reactions as expressing amusement or not using OpenAI's…
Math is widely considered as a powerful tool and its strong appeal depends on the high level of abstraction it allows in modelling a huge number of heterogeneous phenomena and problems, spanning from the static of buildings to the flight of…
An opiniated essay on what pure mathematics is and why the adjective "pure" in "pure mathematics" is not a good choice.
In this paper, our aim is to discuss the outcome of a ten-year experimental workshop activity carried out by the Center `matematita' (http://www.matematita.it/) with classes of pre-university students of any age. We analyse the potential…
Emojis have become a universal language in online communication, often carrying nuanced and context-dependent meanings. Among these, irony poses a significant challenge for Large Language Models (LLMs) due to its inherent incongruity…
Humour, a fundamental aspect of human communication, manifests itself in various styles that significantly impact social interactions and mental health. Recognising different humour styles poses challenges due to the lack of established…
Mathematics cannot anymore be assimilated to a linguistic game, where formal proofs are strongly differentiated with conjectural thinking, without building any category of knowledge to understand the passage (Wittgenstein's gist). Nowadays,…
We establish fun parallels between coin-weighing puzzles and knights-and-knaves puzzles.
The art of the scientific presentation -- much like the art of the perfect plot, the art of the compelling proposal, and the art of the killer job application -- is generally not something we're taught in school. Therefore, in classic…
Prime numbers or primes are man's eternal treasures that have been cherished for several millennia, until today. As their academic ancestors in ancient Mesopotamia, many mathematicians are still trying hard to see primes better. I shall…
I discuss some problems related to extreme mathematical realism, focusing on a recently proposed "shut-up-and-calculate" approach to physics (arXiv:0704.0646, arXiv:0709.4024). I offer arguments for a moderate alternative, the essence of…
The ability to read, write, and speak mathematics is critical to students becoming comfortable with statistical models and skills. Faster development of those skills may act as encouragement to further engage with the discipline. Vocabulary…
In the spirit of "multi-culturalism", we use four kinds of computations: simulation, numeric, symbolic, and "conceptual" to explore some "games of pure chance" inspired by children board games like "Snakes and Ladders" (aka as "Chutes and…
This is an expository article about the topological theory of digital images, and a gamification of a research project.
Several thoughts are presented on the long ongoing difficulties both students and academics face related to Calculus 101. Some of these thoughts may have a more general interest.
In this short article, we present a solution to one of the probability puzzles that Daniel Litt, a mathematician at the University of Toronto, posted on his X account earlier this year. The main goal of this note is to show how some of the…
Can AI solve all math? What do we actually mean by doing mathematics? How do we communicate mathematics? What is mathematics beyond problem solving? This essay is my attempt to answer these questions.
In the article "The Tale of Two Queens and Two Towering Figures" published in CNJ in 2012 (CNJ vol. 57 No. 5, pp. 304-315), we discussed the contributions of Copernicus and Newton to coin minting and monetary reforms, as well as the…
This text contains over three hundred specific open questions on various topics in additive combinatorics, each placed in context by reviewing all relevant results. While the primary purpose is to provide an ample supply of problems for…