2011 in Review

Happy New Year!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for the Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 53,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 20 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Thanks to all of you who visit and make writing this blog worthwhile!

Click here to see the complete report.

2011 is Prime Time

It’s been eight years coming, but finally, a year that’s a prime number. This hasn’t happened since 2003, but 2011 is prime.

Express 2011 as a sum of consecutive prime numbers.

That can be done in several different ways.

As it turns out, 2011 is extra cool because it can be written as a sum of a prime number of consecutive prime numbers.

When will that happen again?

And finally…

What is the next year that will be a prime number and also be a sum of a prime number of consecutive prime numbers? (Wow, that’s a mouthful, ain’t it?)

Welcome to 2011

An original problem to kick off the new year:

Place three operators (+, –, ×, ÷) between the digits below to make an expression equal to 2011.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7

For instance, using three + signs, you could make the expression 123 + 45 + 6 + 7, which is equal to 181.

A more standard problem to begin any new year is this:

Combine the digits of the year (in this case, 2, 0, 1, 1) to create each of the numbers 1–100. Extra credit if you can keep the digits in the same order as they appear in the year. For instance, 2⁰ – 1 + 1 = 1 would be a way to make 1 with the digits in order, and 10 – 2 + 1 = 9 would be a way to make 9 with the digits out of order. 

I hope that 2011 brings you peace, love, happiness, and lots of problems!