If you have read books situated in an earlier timeframe, you may have come across the term ‘Golden Ratio.’ To some, this term represents a number named Phi and to others, it represents the standard of beauty and perfection. What is Phi? The mathematical term ‘Phi’ or 𝚽 represents an irrational number that goes on […]
The Secret of 0…1…1…2…3…..1.618
Many of us have heard of the Fibonacci sequence. When I was younger, the Fibonacci sequence fascinated me. I memorized over twenty numbers in the sequence! I marvelled at how someone could discover this “cool math stuff.” However, although I knew all the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence, I didn’t understand the applications of this […]
Perfecting a 1500-year-old Game with AI
Ever since chess was created roughly 1500 years ago, it’s seen both grandmasters and casuals alike attempting to understand the game. Recently, I myself have begun learning Chess on a website called Chess.com. Chess.com is able to tell me how well I performed after every one of my matches. But how does it always know […]
Just Six Degrees of Separation
by Lauren Tam Let’s say you wanted to meet the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Say you’re staying in a hotel and happen to know the doorman. The doorman knows the owner; the owner knows the owner of a more high-end hotel. A government official happens to frequent that hotel, and is friends with […]
Berkson’s Paradox – a Statistical Illusion
By: Michael Mo Once in a while, Twitter blows up with the story of a high school dropout who became a multi-billionaire. Before long, people would start saying things like “university is useless!” or “School is useless!” in the comment section. Their “argument” is that Ivy League graduates are struggling to find jobs while high […]
The puzzling world of ciphers
By Megan Wang As someone who loves brainteasers, logic puzzles have always appealed to me. At our most recent FSL session, we had the pleasure to learn about ciphers and try to crack some of our own! We looked at Caesar ciphers (more on that later), but there is still a wide variety of ciphers […]
The Apple of my Pi
If I could name my favourite number, it would be pi or π. It is irrational. I mean, not irrational like my sister, but because it is a decimal that goes on forever and cannot be expressed as a fraction. It is also transcendental. That is not some yogi term. A transcendental number is a […]
The Birthday Paradox: A Blind Spot of Intuitive Probability
By Nina Peloso As people, our first impression of the ‘chances’ is almost always reliant on ‘intuitive probability‘. Most often, this habit helps us by letting us make broad assumptions that (usually) turn out to be correct. However, sometimes our intuition is what bars us from wrapping our heads around the actual solution. In 1885, […]
Zeno’s Dichotomy Paradox
By: Michael Mo Once upon a time, an Ancient Greek philosopher named Zeno created a paradox that “denied” the possibility for movement. Here is how it goes: If a person wants to travel from Point A to Point B, they must first walk half that distance in a finite amount of time. Thereafter, they must […]
Intermediate Value Theorem
By: Michael Mo The Intermediate Value Theorem – IVT – is a concept in calculus that talks about the property of a continuous function. Not that continuity on its own has a rigorous definition based on the concept of limits. For the sake of simplicity, however, we can just assume that a continuous function is […]