Guess the Graph

The bar graph below was created because of a recent discussion with my wife. The title and axis labels have been removed. Can you identify the data set used to create the graph? I’ll give you some hints:

• The data set contains 32 elements.
• It’s based on a real-world phenomenon from this year.
• The middle five categories account for 81% of the data.
• The special points marked by A, B, and C won’t help you identify the data set, but they will be discussed below.

Got a guess?

No clue? Okay, one more hint:

• The vertical axis represents “Teams.”

Still not sure? Final hints:

• Point A represents the lowly J-E-T-S, who are currently winless.
• The region outlined by B shows that 26 teams have from 3 to 7 wins.
• Point C on the graph represents my Pittsburgh Steelers, whose record is a perfect 10‑0. (It’s my hope that I’ll still be able to gloat on Friday morning, after the Steelers host the Ravens on Thanksgiving night.)

This graph was generated while discussing the current standings in the NFL with my wife, who speculated that there seemed to be a lot of really good teams and a lot of really bad teams this year. The horizontal axis represents the number of wins. As it turns out, the distribution above is somewhat typical at this point in the season. At the end of most seasons, about 2/3 of the teams finish a 16-game season with 5 to 10 wins. It may be a little unusual that there are 8 teams with 7 wins, but it’s not statistically cray-cray.

If you’ve read this far, then you may enjoy these other math-related football trivia questions:

1. Describe two ways in which an NFL game can end with a score of 2‑0.
2. What’s the greatest score that cannot be attained by scoring only touchdowns (7 points) and field goals (3 points)?
3. Express the ratio of width:length of a football field. For length, include the end zones.
4. What are the only positions allowed to wear single-digit uniform numbers?
5. During a typical broadcast of an NFL game, approximately what percent of the time is spent actually playing football (as opposed to commercials, half time, or just milling around between snaps)?

Happy Drinksgiving! And, go Stillers!

—

Answers

1. A game can end 2‑0 if one team scores a safety and the other team doesn’t score at all. It can also end 2‑0 if one team forfeits before either team has scored, by league rule. (In high school and college, a forfeit is officially recorded as a 1‑0 loss.)
2. 11 points. Any point total above that is (theoretically) possible. Below that, it’s not possible to score 1, 2, 4, 5, or 8 points.
3. A field is 53 1/3 yards wide and 120 yards long. In feet, that’s 160:360, which can be reduced to 4:9.
4. Quarterbacks and kickers.
5. According to several analyses, 11 minutes of a three-hour broadcast is spent actually playing. That’s about 3%. Sheesh.

Mathy Portmanteaux

The term portmanteau was first used by Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

Well, ‘slithy’ means “lithe and slimy” and ‘mimsy’ is “flimsy and miserable.” You see, it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.

Interestingly, the word portmanteau itself is also a blend of two different words: porter (to carry) and manteau (a cloak).

Portmanteaux are extremely popular in modern-day English, and new word combinations are regularly popping up. Sometimes, perhaps, there are too many being coined. In fact, one author refers to these newcomers as portmonsters, a portmanteau of, well, portmanteau and monster that attempts to capture how grotesque some of these beasts are. An abridged list of portmonsters would include sharknado, arachnoquake, blizzaster, snowpocalypse, Brangelina, Bennifer, Kimye, Javanka, fantabulous, and ridonkulous.

These are Portman toes, not portmanteaux.

Portmanteaux seem to proliferate most easily in B-movie titles, weather, and celebrity couples, but the world of math and science is not free from them. Here are a few mathy portmanteaux, presented, of course, as equations.

ginormous = giant + enormous, really big

guesstimate = guess + estimate, a reasonable speculation

three-peat = three + repeat, to win a championship thrice

clopen set = closed + open set, a topological space that is both open and closed

bit = binary + digit, the smallest unit of measurement used to quantify computer data

pixel = picture + element, a small area on a display screen; many can combine to form an image

voxel = volume + pixel, the 3D analog to pixel

fortnight = fourteen + night, a period of two weeks

parsec = parallax + second, an astronomy unit equal to about 3.26 light years

alphanumeric = alphabetical + numeric, containing both letters and numerals

sporabola = spore + parabola, the trajectory of a basidiospore after it is discharged from a sterigma

gerrymandering = Elbridge Gerry + salamander, to draw districts in such a way as to gain political advantage (In the 1800’s, Governor Elbridge Gerry redrew districts in Massachusetts to his political benefit. One of the redrawn districts looked like a salamander.)

megamanteau = mega + portmanteau, a portmanteau containing more than two words, such as DelMarVa, a peninsula that separates the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean and includes parts of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia

meganegabar = mega + negative + bar, the line used on a check so that someone can’t add “and one million” to increase the amount

(By the way, when Rutgers University invited Jersey Shore cast member Snooki Polizzi to speak to students on campus in 2011, they paid her $32,000, which is $2,000 more than they paid Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison to deliver a commencement address six weeks later.)

Getting Back to My Roots

For years, this blog represented the finest mathematical humor that the internet had to offer. That hasn’t been the case so much recently, so it’s time I got back to my roots — of course, for me, those would be cube roots… 

I was inspired to craft this post of horrendously bad puns when my sister’s friend shared this photo with me: 

And I figured if I have to suffer, you should, too.

How many math grad students does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but it takes nine years.

What’s the best tool for math class? Multi-pliers!

Think outside the regular quadrilateral.

When asked how good she was at algebra, the student replied, “Very able.”

What’s the difference between the radius and the diameter? The radius.

Are you depressed when you think about how dumb the average person is? Well, I’ve got bad news for you… nearly half the population is even dumber.

How do you make one disappear? Add a g, then it’s gone.

Writing haiku is
tough, because you have to count.
Writers don’t like math.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

The grad student had trouble getting the pizza box into the recycling can. It was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

How is the moon like a dollar? Both have four quarters.

Don’t look now, but there’s a suspicious man over there with graph paper. I think he’s plotting something.

Thinking > Symbols

As if having to wear a mask while flying isn’t scary enough, last week I had a harrowing experience.

See Valentin Kirilov’s full video at https://vimeo.com/156775315.

It’s normally a three-hour flight from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to Portland, but about 20 minutes into a recent flight, there was an unsettling noise followed by an announcement from the pilot: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain. Please don’t be alarmed by the noise you just heard near the left wing. Let me assure you that everything is okay. We’ve lost an engine, but the other three engines are working just fine. They’ll get us to Portland safely. But instead of taking 3 hours, it’s going to take 4 hours.”

She said this matter-of-factly, as if she were commenting on the color of my shirt or pointing to a squirrel that was enjoying an acorn. It was reassuring that she didn’t seem worried — but still, we had lost an engine! The cabin grew quiet as we waited to see what would happen next. But, nothing. We continued to fly as if nothing had happened, and the din of conversation slowly resumed.

And then there was another noise near the right wing, followed by the pilot: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain again. Unfortunately, we’ve lost another engine. But the two remaining engines are functioning properly. We’re going to get you to Portland safely, but now it’s gonna take about 6 hours.”

Needless to say, you could hear a pin drop as we passengers waited with baited breath. And sure enough, there was another noise, and the pilot again: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve lost a third engine, but we’ll make it safely to Portland with the one engine we’ve got left. It’s just gonna take 12 hours.”

That was when the guy in the seat next to me lost it. “I sure hope we don’t lose that last engine,” he yelled, “or we’re gonna be up here all day!”

That story isn’t true. None of it. Not. One. Single. Fact. I mean, come on! Yellowknife? Why would I need to go to Yellowknife? To brush up on my Dogrib?

But the following story is true.

My honorary niece Ivy occasionally calls for help with math. Not surprisingly, the frequency of calls has increased with online learning during the pandemic. This is a modified version of a question about which she recently called:

A plane traveling against the wind traveled 2,460 miles in 6 hours. Traveling with the wind on the return trip, it only took 5 hours. What was the speed of the plane? What was the speed of the wind?  

It’s assumed that the plane flew at the same average speed in both directions and that the wind was equally strong throughout. On a standardized test, those assumptions would need to be stated explicitly. But on this blog, I make the rules, and I refuse to add more words to explain reasonable assumptions without which the problem would be impossible to solve.

As presented to Ivy in an online homework assignment, the problem stated that x should represent the plane’s speed and y should represent the speed of the wind. My first question was, “Why? What’s wrong with p and w as the variables for plane and wind, respectively?” But my second, and perhaps more important, question was, “Why are they forcing algebra on a problem that is much easier without it?”

Somewhere, many years ago, someone decided that the methods of substitution and elimination were critically important, if not for success in life then at least for success in high school. Anecdotally, this seems to be true; I was a bad-ass systems-of-equations solver in high school, and I was also the captain of the track team that won the county title, so… yeah. Sadly, that someone seemed to put less stock in a slightly more critical skill: thinking.

Here’s the deal. Against the wind, the plane covered 2,460 miles in 6 hours, so the plane’s speed on the way out was 410 miles per hour. With the wind, the plane covered those same 2,460 miles in just 5 hours, so the plane’s speed on the way back was 492 miles per hour. Since the wind is constant in both directions, the unaided speed of the plane must have been 451 miles per hour, exactly halfway between the against-the-wind and with-the-wind speeds. Visually,

The top portion of that diagram represents the plane flying against the wind; the bottom portion represents the plane flying with the wind. This makes it obvious that the the unaided speed of the plane is equidistant from 410 miles per hour and 492 miles per hour, and that distance is the speed of the wind.

Algebraically, the problem might be solved like this…

which is no different than the logical approach above: x ‑ y is the speed of the plane against the wind, and x + y is the speed of the plane with the wind, so the numbers are obviously the same. But using algebra just seems so much more… cumbersome.

Students in elementary classrooms often explain their thinking with drawings and diagrams. Unfortunately, some of that great thought is abandoned when students take a course called Algebra, and the mechanical skill of symbolic manipulation replaces the mathematical skill of logical reasoning. That’s a tragedy. As Jim Rubillo, former executive director at NCTM, used to say, “We have to stop being so symbol‑minded.”