{"id":1528,"date":"2008-12-01T21:50:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T13:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/?p=1528"},"modified":"2013-02-10T17:57:02","modified_gmt":"2013-02-10T09:57:02","slug":"intmath-newsletter-trigonometry-tips-and-a-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/letters\/intmath-newsletter-trigonometry-tips-and-a-puzzle-1528","title":{"rendered":"IntMath Newsletter - Trigonometry tips and a puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"

1 Dec 2008<\/p>\n

In this Newsletter:<\/p>\n

1. Earth Puzzle
\n2. Math tip - Trigonometry
\n3. From the math blog
\n4. Solution
\n5. Final thought - 3 kinds of people<\/p>\n

1. Earth Puzzle<\/h2>\n

I walk 20 paces North then turn left and walk another 20 paces West. I turn left again and walk a further 20 paces South. I am amazed to find that I'm back in the same place that I started.<\/p>\n

Where am I?<\/p>\n

[Hint: This puzzle is related to Earth Geometry<\/a> that we talked about in the last edition. Solution at the end of this Newsletter.]<\/p>\n

\n

2. Math tip - Trigonometry<\/h2>\n

\"Introduction<\/a>A reader asks, \"what is trigonometry all about?\".<\/p>\n

See my reply here: What is trigonometry all about?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

3. From the math blog<\/h2>\n

1) Project Euler<\/a>
\nProject Euler has some interesting math questions that require the use of computer algorithms to solve.<\/p>\n

2) Unicode characters for Chinese and Japanese numbers<\/a>
\nUnicode characters use hexadecimal numbers (base 16) to display characters from languages like Japanese, Chinese, and Greek.<\/p>\n

3) Friday Math Movie - Math Rules!<\/a>
\nThis week's math movie was a finalist in the X-Box Competition at the 2007 New York Television Festival.<\/p>\n

\n

4. Solution<\/h2>\n

The answer to the puzzle above is that I started at the South Pole. I walked 20 paces North, then 20 paces West, then 20 paces South again, arriving back at the South Pole, where I started.<\/p>\n

\"Earth<\/p>\n

In the picture, it looks like the second and third legs of the journey are not straight. This is one of the intriguing things about Earth Geometry — no lines are straight. (The first leg appears straight because North is straight up on the picture.)<\/p>\n

\n

4. Final thought - 3 Kinds of People<\/h2>\n

There are 3 kinds of people:<\/p>\n

1. Not very clever people — the ones who never learn from their mistakes
\n2. Smart people who do<\/b> learn from their mistakes
\n3. Successful people who learn from the mistakes of others<\/b><\/p>\n

Which kind of person are you?<\/p>\n

Until next time.<\/p>\n

See the 18 Comments<\/a> below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. Earth Puzzle
\n2. Math tip - Trigonometry
\n3. From the math blog
\n4. Solution
\n5. Final thought - 3 kinds of people<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intmath.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}