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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Seating Groups And 'What A Coincidence!': Mathematics In The Making And How It Gets Presented, Peter J. Rowlett
Seating Groups And 'What A Coincidence!': Mathematics In The Making And How It Gets Presented, Peter J. Rowlett
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
Mathematics is often presented as a neatly polished finished product, yet its development is messy and often full of mis-steps that could have been avoided with hindsight. An experience with a puzzle illustrates this conflict. The puzzle asks for the probability that a group of four and a group of two are seated adjacently within a hundred seats, and is solved using combinatorics techniques.
Patterns Formed By Coins, Andrey M. Mishchenko
Patterns Formed By Coins, Andrey M. Mishchenko
Journal of Humanistic Mathematics
This article is a gentle introduction to the mathematical area known as circle packing, the study of the kinds of patterns that can be formed by configurations of non- overlapping circles. The first half of the article is an exposition of the two most important facts about circle packings, (1) that essentially whatever pattern we ask for, we may always arrange circles in that pattern, and (2) that under simple conditions on the pattern, there is an essentially unique arrangement of circles in that pattern. In the second half of the article, we consider related questions, but where we …