HAPPY SQUARE ROOT DAY!

fermatFor those math geeks ready to party hearty, Square Root day is back. These days come only nine times each century and March 3, 2009 is one such day. (3/3/09 or the square root of nine). Citizens should be cautious as pocket-protector and pencil laden math fiends hit the streets across America looking for some crazy fun with calculators and multiplication tables. It is the one day that you can party like it is the 1999 Math Game.


Square Root Day comes with contests in Redwood, California. The prize is a date with an actual non-inflatable person. Ok, I lied, it is $339.

The last Square Root day was five years ago, Feb. 2, 2004, which happened to coincide with Groundhog Day.

Women named Leslie are particularly at risk because geeks can spell their names on calculators. (That is how I won over my wife). Women or men named Leslie may want to go by Lisa or Larry until after midnight when the mathophiles return to their lairs.

For those who find themselves cornered by math geeks seeking a good time, here is a couple of tips.

First, do not fall for the suggestion of “coming up stairs for some long division” or to “look at my scribblings.”

Second, if asked by math toughs what you think about Archimedes, Euclid, Sir Isaac Newton, Pythagoras, Blaise Pascal, Carl Gauss, Aryabhatta, Ramanujam, just say that you like them all and keep walking.

Third, if you are surrounded, throw out a difficult but intriguing math problem like Pierre de Fermat’s mind teaser: propose that xn + yn = zn has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2. That took 350 years to solve. As they debate it, walk away quietly.

Albert (Love is all relative) Einstein once said that “Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.” Yet, it was on Square Root Day that he got really frisky as shown on this fetching beach shot:

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He would often prowl the beaches on Square Root Day, looking for acute girls with perfect linear equations.

For those math geeks heading out to try to conjugate, there are a couple of math pick up line sites that can help here and here. Some are a bit risky like “I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves.” One of my favorites is “Honey, you’re sweeter than pi.” It is enough to make the strongest math major swoon.

Go forth Math Geeks and multiply.images

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29 thoughts on “HAPPY SQUARE ROOT DAY!”

  1. I believe if a simple analytical formula for calculating root square of a number is available, the future education on the world will be better.

  2. Maybe the Square Root Day is purposed to remember us that until know the world doesn’t have analytical formulation of the square root. Calandra method as one of the square root method is still need great effort to calculate for example to get √4 without involve the fact that 4=2*2. Even, the several numerical scheme such as bisection, Newton Rapshon, and secant method are not capable to create the square root value using zero initial guess.

  3. Costumarily in calculating the square root of a number we must know the nearest of square number as approximation such as in applying calandra method. Recently I have been creating analytical method to calculate the square root that need not the common approximation, even it only need null or zero initial guess.Here I need your information,what appropriate journal or paten instution for publishing the method.THX.

  4. Buddha:

    I believe your analysis is correct.

    I dont believe Li used his equation to that end as you said even the Chinese are not that subtle.

  5. Bron,

    It sounds more like coincidence to me and for one main reason: money. If it had been a purposeful attack by the Chinese, it may have been tactically subtle, but strategic blunder. The Chinese government is heavily leveraged into Credit Default Swaps and it’s kicking their butt. They would have stepped into their own bear trap so to speak as they are taking a huge hit from our economic crisis as well. Plus, it would require too many “unknowables” to execute. How could they be sure Li’s model would be adopted at all? More to the tactics, how could you predict a time frame for collapse accurately? If not impossible, it would be difficult to do with any degree of precision or accuracy. And you’d need to know the timing, just like any attack, so you could execute ancillary and support projects in a timely fashion. The model itself is visibly limited/defective upon inspection. Even Li himself warned about the model’s deficiencies. The Chinese ability to influence the behavior of Wall St. directly like that simply doesn’t exist – unless they’ve mastered telepathic mind control. No, I have to put the blame of misusing the tool squarely with Wall St. and their uncontrolled greed. That it has done so much damage at such an inopportune time is simply bad luck.

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