Christmas and Maths

Being the nerd that I am, there are just tons of things that we can relate numbers to in holidays. Christmas is coming up and there are a plethora of number related fun that we can have like the probability of obtaining a certain present, estimating the price of a present (taking into account the Christmas "sales" that were present at the time), or the usual estimation of the speed of Santa based on the weight of presents using statistics of popular "wished for" gifts of the year along with average reindeer speed, wind resistance, entry/exit house time, etc.

There is quite a list of things you can do this holiday season, but one that I stumbled upon was this one:

12. Unwrapping Gifts (and Math)

Well, I doubt that anyone will be in the mood, but here goes!

1. Determine the probability that Dad gets a tie.
2. Estimate and time how long it takes to unwrap all the presents.
3. Compare and contrast this with how long it took to wrap them.
4. Chart the number of gifts received versus those given.
5. Estimate and weigh the bags of recycled wrapping paper.
6. Explore nets with the extra boxes, and measure them using cubits.
7. Sort your gifts into Venn diagrams and make a pie chart to illustrate your findings.
8. Line up all the Christmas chocolates into arrays; sort, group and put them into sets.
9. Use the leftover ribbon to explore topology and create a gigantic mobius strip.
10. Try to build a rhombicosidodecahedron out of the recycled wrapping paper or just take a short break from math.

They have more Christmas maths you can do here: http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/articles/121106.htm

Fun stuffs!

Theory: Asymptotes and Negative Space

Recently, I've been working with some graphs and the many different types of lines that we can have fun with like hyperboles and parabolas. But among these I start to think about Asymptotes. I think it's a pretty interesting word that has very little use in everyday conversation (unless you are into analytical geometry or something). What is an Asymptote? In a nutshell: An Asymptote is a line on a graph that the graph will never intersect as it approaches infinity. Asymptotes are the DO NOT CROSS lines of graphs with curves.

Image of an Asymptote from Wikipedia

After thinking about it for a little bit, I came to think that an Asymptote is the Negative Space of a graph. Negative Space in a nutshell (from a Graphic Design perspective): The space where content is not usually located around the content. Breathing room, if you will. Negative Space is one of those things that I am interested in as it allows me to view graphic images in black and white creating something I could easily translate into a graph.

Taiwan recycling logo displaying use of Negative Space

While Asymptotes generally deal with graphs that contain curves and you can't guarantee that all your designs will have some crazy curves or parabolas, I imagine that for those designs that do use curves, knowledge of Asymptotes could improve the synergy of your design between the content and it's Negative Space. How? I'm not sure yet, it's just a theory, an idea that came into my mind out of nowhere. But I think that it's worth at least putting out there for a few minutes of thought.