George Boole was born in Lincoln, England on the 2nd of November 1815. His father had a love for mathematics and he taught George his knowledge. By the age of eight, George wanted to know more than what his father could teach him. A family friend taught him Latin and by the time he was 12, he could translate texts in Latin. Soon he was fluent in German, Italian, and French. When he was sixteen he became an assistant teacher and then by the time he was 20, he had opened his own school. Soon George published his first paper (Researches on the Theory of Analytical Transformations) at age 24. Very soon he saw that he could apply his algebra to solve logical problems. In his 1847 work, The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, he argued that logic was mathematics, and not philosophy. This paper won him some respect from others of the same opinion and it also earned him a place in faculty of Ireland’s Queen’s College (now called University College Dublin).
Now that he was free of running his school, he worked harder and in greater detail on his theory. He was determined to find a way to solve logical problems mathematically. He then came up with what could be called some sort of linguistic algebra, and the three most basic operations he had was AND, OR, and NOT. Boole’s system was only on a binary approach, meaning there were only two objects processed (yes-no, true-false, zero-one). Considering his stature, his idea was mostly either criticised or completely ignored. However, Charles Sanders Pierce liked the idea and twelve years after Boole had published it, Pierce gave a brief speech about it and then got to work to expand it, realising the potential use it had in electronic circuitry. He eventually designed an electric logical circuit. He never actually built his circuit, but he integrated ‘Boolean’ algebra into his university logic philosophy classes. Eventually, one of his students, Claude Shannon, liked the idea and continued it.

George Boole published many other papers regarding other subjects, but he is most known for the boolean algebra. Unfortunately, he died unexpectedly on the 8th of December 1864, at the age of 49. He had walked in the rain for a long time to arrive to his class on time. He then lectured in his wet clothes and he died of a harsh cold. Boolean algebra is still used today in electronic circuits.

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is a mathematical ratio. It is the ratio between the circumference (length around) of a circle, and it’s diameter. No matter what circumference or diameter a circle has, the ratio will always be Pi. Pi is an irrational number. It never repeats i.e. it has no apparent pattern. It is indefinite, meaning it can never end. Even today some of it’s numbers are not known. As an analogy to see how big and indefinte Pi is, think, that if all the ink in the universe was put together, it still wouldn’t be enough to write down Pi in numerical form.

is the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, and it literally means ‘p’ (the letter p). Pi has been known since the early egyptians. They did not know everything about Pi, but they knew it was a little more than 3. Archimedes was the first mathematician to really rigorously study Pi. He came up with an approximate value of 3.14185. All through the ages, different versions of Pi appeared but none contained more than ten digits. After the 2nd Millenium AD, Pi got changed and as much as over 200 new digits were found. During the 20th century, Pi calculations became even more precise with the help from computers. In 1949, John von Neumann used ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Intergrator And Computer) to compute 2037 digits, a calculation which lasted 70hrs.

Did you know: The current Guinness World Record of the most digits of Pi remembered belongs to Lu Chao, from China. He recited 67,890 digits in 24hrs and 4 minutes. The rules were no breaks or pauses and with no little more than 15 seconds in between each digit, and no mistakes. In an interview, he claimed he knew 90,000, but he made a mistake on the 67,891st digit, stopping short his record.

Here is a very nice video I found on youtube concerning Pi:

References: [...][...]

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As a sort of experiment, I decided to see how much certain appliances in my house cost my parents. At first, as a control, I unplugged everything and I even switched off the fridge. This is to prevent another thing consuming electricity and compromising the results. On my list of appliances was: 1) the electric kettle, 2) the toaster, 3) all the integrated lights turned on, 4) the projector, sound system, and blu-ray player, (everything needed to watch a movie). I tried each one individually, switching them off as I was finished with them to make sure the next appliance was the only thing consuming. The way I got my results was that I timed myself for one minute and counted how many times I saw the red line (black in my case) on the rotating piece of metal under the numbers indicating the watts consumed. I tried each appliance three times to make sure I got an average and here is what the results looked like:

Here is an average of the rotations:

On the electric meter, it was indicated that 187.5 revolutions (rotations of the line) was equal to 1 kilo watt. This means that if the line revolved 187 and a half times, the numbers on top would be bigger by one unit. To find out how many watts were used in only one turn, I did a simple 3 rule. 1000 watts is equal to 1 kilo watt.

per turn

And then, I calculated how much each appliance used in watts by multiplying the number of watts per rotation with the number of turns I counted for the appliances..

Kettle=

Toaster=

Lights=

Projector and Co.=

I then went on to find out how much it cost money-wise. On a recent electricity bill, I saw the price at:

14.10 cents per kilo watt.

The problem was that my previous calculations weren’t in kilo watts but in watts. Once I had the watts, I had to simply divide by 1000 to convert them to kilo watts, and multiply by the price (14.10 cents) and then convert the price to euros (divide by 100).
Here is a table with the appliance, the number of watts consumed, and the price:

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Marvin Mouseketeer was tired of being bullied by Kitty Catketeer. He wanted to buy a sharp sword to slice up the cat. A good sword costs €244. However, Mouseketeer had only €154 in his pocket. If he could save €6 each month, (i) how long will it take him in years and months before he could deal with the cat?

Sword=€244

Marvin has=€154

Saves = €6 each month

(i) how long will it take him in years and months before he could deal with the cat?
Answer= 1 year and 3 months

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Olly Ogre had thrice as many pickled human fingers as pickled human toes in his fridge. When his best friend, Izzy Imp, came over, Olly gave him 664 pickled human fingers. Now Olly has thrice as many pickled human toes as pickled human fingers. (i)How many toes and fingers did Olly have in his fridge before Izzy came over?

(i)How many toes and fingers did Olly have in his fridge before Izzy came over?
=

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Captain Crook attacked a merchant ship and captured the passengers in the ship. At first there were thrice as many male passengers as female passengers. However, the evil captain threw 285 male passengers into the sea to feed the sharks. After that, there were twice as many female passengers as male passengers left. (i) What was the total number of passengers before the unlucky ones became shark bait?

(i) What was the total number of passengers before the unlucky ones became shark bait?
=

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Grandma Shark had 8 times as many teeth as Grandpa Shark and used to brag about it. Last night a tooth fairy gave Grandpa Shark 145 razor-sharp teeth. Now Grandpa Shark has 3/4 as many teeth as Grandma Shark. (i) How many teeth does Grandpa Shark have now? (ii) How many teeth did the two of them have in total before the tooth fairy granted Grandpa Shark his wish?

(i) How many teeth does Grandpa Shark have now?

=

(ii) How many teeth did the two of them have in total before the tooth fairy granted Grandpa Shark his wish?

=

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I recently installed a plugin for WordPress called LaTex. It enables me to write down mathematical formulas and equations. Here is an example.

or something a little more complicated

And there you go.

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