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Some people, in particular non-mathematicians, use the term folk mathematics to refer to the informal mathematics studied in many ethno-cultural studies of mathematics. [ citation needed ] Although the term "mathematical folklore" can also be used within the mathematics circle to describe the various aspects of their esoteric culture and ...
Some of the more well-known topics in recreational mathematics are Rubik's Cubes, magic squares, fractals, logic puzzles and mathematical chess problems, but this area of mathematics includes the aesthetics and culture of mathematics, peculiar or amusing stories and coincidences about mathematics, and the personal lives of mathematicians.
Board games often use dice for a randomization element, and thus each roll of the dice has a profound impact on the outcome of the game, however dice games are differentiated in that the dice do not determine the success or failure of some other element of the game; they instead are the central indicator of the person's standing in the game.
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Nonetheless, the game is bound to end as some free ends become isolated. With n initial crosses, the number of moves will, remarkably, always be 5n − 2. Consequently, a game starting with an odd number of crosses will be a first player win, while a game starting with an even number will be a second player win regardless of the moves.
A unique game is a special case of a two-prover one-round (2P1R) game. A two-prover one-round game has two players (also known as provers) and a referee. The referee sends each player a question drawn from a known probability distribution, and the players each have to send an answer. The answers come from a set of fixed size.
Conway's Game of Life and fractals, as two examples, may also be considered mathematical puzzles even though the solver interacts with them only at the beginning by providing a set of initial conditions. After these conditions are set, the rules of the puzzle determine all subsequent changes and moves.
In game theory, Zermelo's theorem is a theorem about finite two-person games of perfect information in which the players move alternately and in which chance does not affect the decision making process. It says that if the game cannot end in a draw, then one of the two players must have a winning strategy (i.e. can force a win).