MathPlus's definitions

Pirrot

Short for “Pi Parrot.” Someone who takes part in a memory competition that requires them to recite as many digits of the decimal number π as possible, when the local winner stands a chance of getting their name into their country’s Book of Records, or the global winner into the Guinness Book of Records.

Guesstimate the total number of amateur and professional pirrots worldwide, who spend thousands of hours every year training for the pithon or pi competition.

by MathPlus October 17, 2021

Coronadoku

Short for “Coronavirus Sudoku.” A sudoku that uses nine corona variants represented by the Greek characters (⍺, β, 𝛾, 𝛿, …) rather than numbers 1–9 to make it look devilishly harder to solve.

MathPlus Publishing is releasing “Coronadoku for Gifted Kids” before the Lunar New Year as a reminder of the initial number of people who died of the coronavirus in Wuhan, before the epidemic became a pandemic.

by MathPlus October 18, 2021

Pi Rebel

One who insists on using the number π to a certain (oft-higher) degree of accuracy in a calculation in opposition to an assigned approximate value, with an infinitesimal or quasi-zero effect on the final answer—a case of exhibiting numerical pride rather than promoting reasonable accuracy.

What are the odds that pi rebels are likely to be haughty nerds who are symbol-minded attention seekers or suckers?

by MathPlus October 18, 2021

Mathematical Verb

A math word or term that has graduated from noun to verb—for example, “zero,” “square,” and “number.”

Mathematical verbs, such as model, pattern, and fractal, are the mathematical equivalents of Google, Xerox, and Zoom.

by MathPlus October 19, 2021

Pitoid

Short for “Pi Factoid.” Tidbits or juicy bits about the number π that seldom make it to the side pages of math textbooks.

Some examples of pitoids are:
a) In a mathematical beauty contest, the number π would be the Miss Universe among the constants.
b) Aliens are more likely to communicate to earthlings in terms of e, i, and π rather than 0 and 1.
c) No number in popular culture is more famous than π.

by MathPlus October 19, 2021

Viral Math

When a brain-unfriendly, tricky, or ill-posed oft-elementary math question in a national exam is shared rapidly and widely on the internet, because an obscene number of unhappy students and their clueless parents could not solve it, who blamed the problem poser of the “unfair” question for causing them trauma, nightmare, pain, or suffering, with some even entertaining suicidal thoughts.

Singapore’s high-stakes Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE)—grade six—exam is notorious for setting viral math questions almost every other year—the PSLE math paper via its higher order thinking skills (HOTS) questions acts as a social filter to filter out the nerds from the herd.

by MathPlus October 21, 2021

Philaculus

Commemorative stamps that honor the contributions of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, the co-fathers of Calculus, to mankind.

How many philaculus first day covers have so far been issued worldwide that credit the mathematical achievements of co-discovers Newton and Leibniz, who fought a years-old “mathematical war,” by accusing each other of plagiarism?

by MathPlus October 28, 2021