Publications by Jerry Tuttle
Sheldon Cooper’s favorite number
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 Bing Bang Theory, aired December 9, 2010, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632225/characters/nm1433588 , Sheldon asks what everyone’s favorite number is. Raj sug...
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Rene Descartes walks into a bar
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 not.” Then poof – he disappears. Of course I naively I assumed my students had been expo...
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Mind reader game, and Unicode symbols
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 RESULT. Examine the table of symbols below and find the SYMBOL that corresponds with your RESULT...
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Text analysis of 2024 US Presidential convention speeches
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? Yes, if I confine my remarks to a numerical text analysis of the candidates’ words, rather than attempt to comment on the candidate...
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Is the Mona Lisa thinking about irrational numbers?
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 next day, and maybe you will have a fresh insight. This often works for me. 58 years later … I recently applied this s...
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The distribution has changed; and pretty tables in base R
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, “This number doesn’t look right.” Bosses have an uncann...
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Radar charts and five-tool baseball players
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 perfect application for this kind of chart. A radar chart is an alternative to a column chart to display three or more quantitativ...
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Something a llttle different: Hexbin maps
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 equally sized regular hexagon. (A regular hexagon can tessellate a plane, one of only three regular polygons that can do so besides an ...
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Taylor Swift and Data Analysis
Taylor Swift and Data Analysis. by Jerry Tuttle Who will be the most talked-about celebrity before, during, and after the Super Bowl?...
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Using great circle distance to determine Twin Cities
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 conditions: the cities must be at most 10 miles apart, each city must have at least 200,000 people, a...
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