asymptotes

I just finished giving a midterm exam in one of my classes. Of course, I spent much time thinking about the bonus questions, which I call Nonlinear Reasoning, being a mixture of course topics and humor. One of bonus questions was the following: (The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing, determines whether a machine can be considered intelligent or not.) Those who are versed in the War of the Ring could easily deduce that the correct answer to this question is " One Ring ": Sauron and Gollum are not interested in passing the Turing Test because they are only interested in the  One Ring . However, most of my students just answered " ring ". Since I am not a terror teacher, I guess I will have to give these students partial points. However, I also have to be reasonable and just in giving it to them. Since there are twenty Rings of Power in all  –  Three for the Elven-kings under the sky; Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone; Nine for Mortal...

Today is Pi Day. Happy Pi Day everyone! March 14 is celebrated in the Geek World as International Pi Day. The derivation of this celebration, being straightforward, is left for the readers [1],  following the great tradition of math textbooks. I wish to join today's celebration by presenting an original haiku (a form of short Japanese poetry) and a well-known trivia. Pi Haiku Circumferential Pi A point went around Its distance traveled divided by twice the length of a rotating arm Behold! Pi is in hand. Pi Trivia Do you want to remember the value of pi up to 14 decimal places?  Just memorize the sentence below.  "How I need a drink, alcoholic, of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics." The number of letters in each word gives out the digits of pi in order.  You should be able to get 3.14159265358979. Photo credit: "Pumpkin Pi" by bigfoot13 in www.sxc.hu ------ [1] But we provide the sol...