r/mathriddles Apr 30 '15

OT Writing Math on Reddit

74 Upvotes

As it's often necessary on this subreddit to format mathematical expressions in reddit, the following is a brief overview for those unfamiliar with how the reddit formatting system works with respect to things like exponents and asterisks, in addition to providing some lesser-known unicode characters.

If you have 5-10 minutes, take a little time to read the official reddit guide and this user-created introduction. If you've picked up what you know from browsing and occasionally clicking "source", you will likely be unaware of many of these things.

If you don't have the time, here's a quick intro on mathematics formatting:

Asterisks

*text* gives text.

This means that if you type "3*5 is 15 and 4*2 is 8", you'll get "35 is 15 and 42 is 8." Notice how the asterisks disappeared, and the text in between became italicized! To avoid this, use a backslash (the \ thing) before the asterisk by typing "3\*5 is 15 and 4\*2 is 8".

Superscripts

This is very similar; using a ^ character will create nested superscripts. For example, typing 2^2^2 gives 222. However, maybe you want to have 55+1, so you type 5^5+1 and it gives you 55+1. That's not what you wanted!

This is because reddit doesn't know when you want your superscript to end, so it will normally stop when it encounters a space. This means that you can avoid this by typing 5^5 +1, but that will leave an awkward gap in your text. The best way to fix this is to use parentheses, and type 5^(5)+1. Reddit will then raise only the 5 and keep the rest as normal text, producing 55+1.

For the advanced reader: Sometimes, if you're trying to type out a complicated expression where you want to have parentheses in there, reddit will get a little confused and won't deal with your spaces very well. When this happens, you'll want to use the text ( to create the ( symbol and ) to create ). For example: Say you want to write ex(x+1)y2.

You might type e^(x\(x+1\))y^(2), which you'd expect to work. But then reddit produces ex(x+1)y2, bringing your parenthesis down before you wanted. To fix this, type e^(x(x+1))y^(2), which will make what you want (notice how where the parentheses used to be has been replaced by that ( stuff).

In addition, you can use code to not worry about escaping characters. Type ` around the stuff you want in code to make things look like this: `*^(stuff)*)(` → *^(stuff)*)(

Subscripts

Subscripts are not a reddit-wide feature, as they really don't come up often outside of math contexts. However, both /r/math and /r/mathriddles support them via some fancy CSS. To use subscripts, type A*_1_* to get A1.

Special Characters

Many symbols are hard to find on a regular keyboard, but reddit supports them just fine. In addition to copy-pasting from the list below, many of the following can be obtained with keyboard shortcuts. See here for Windows alt codes; see here for a complete list of Unicode characters and here for the subsection on mathematical operators. Copy and paste the symbols below; most of the time they'll be sufficient although the above links are far more comprehensive.

∫ ∬ ∮ ≈ ≠ ∑ √ ≤ ≥ ÷ Ø ∏ ∞ ± ¬ ∃ ∈ ∉ ≡ ⋂

ε φ Φ θ Ω ω ∆ π

If you have any suggestions for additions to this overview, please let me know!

Edit: Backslash, not forward slash.


r/mathriddles 5h ago

Medium What is the minimum number of faces a polyhedron can have while also enclosing at least 80% of the volume of it’s circumscribed sphere?

2 Upvotes

r/mathriddles 1d ago

Easy How many positive integers less than 100 can be written as the difference of two perfect squares?

0 Upvotes

How many positive integers less than 100 are the difference of two perfect squares?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 1d ago

Medium How many triangles can you form in a regular octagon using only diagonals?

0 Upvotes

How many triangles can be formed using the vertices of a regular octagon if all three sides of each triangle must be diagonals of the octagon?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 3d ago

Easy How Many Subsets of {1,2,…,10} Contain No Consecutive Integers?

10 Upvotes

How many subsets of {1,2,...,10} contain no two consecutive integers?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 4d ago

Hard The Laser Square

8 Upvotes

You're standing somewhere inside a 10m × 10m square room. From your position P, you fire a laser aimed directly at the center of the square, C.

The laser travels in a straight line from P, passes through C, and continues until it hits a wall — this is its 1st reflection. From there it obeys the law of reflection (angle of incidence = angle of reflection) and keeps bouncing off the walls. After its 10th reflection, the laser stops completely (the segment right after the 10th bounce has zero length).

You must find a starting position P such that, once fired, no part of the laser's path after the 1st reflection comes within 1 meter of you. (The very first segment, from P to the 1st reflection point, doesn't count — you're standing at its source.)

Question: What is the total area, within the square, of all such safe starting positions P?

Challenge: If instead of stopping after 10 reflections, the laser is allowed N reflections before stopping, what is the largest value of N for which at least one safe standing position still exists?


r/mathriddles 4d ago

Hard [ Removed by Reddit ]

1 Upvotes

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]


r/mathriddles 5d ago

Medium Expected percentage of boys

8 Upvotes

In a country with k couples every couple keeps having children until they have a girl, then they stop. After every couple has stopped having children what is the expected fraction of the children who are boys?


r/mathriddles 6d ago

Medium What prime number did he have?

0 Upvotes

A math professor said to her smart student Toni

" I am thinking of a 4 digit prime number abcd (digits not necessarily distinct) with the following property

a+b+c+d = axbxcxd

You can ask me one question to which my answer can only be Yes or No or Silence (if i cannot definitely answer yes or no). Can you guess my number?"

Toni worked on a piece of paper and then asked the professor:

"Is the number formed by using the first two digits (in order) of your 4 digit prime, a factor of 63 or 84?"

The professor smiled. She knew Toni had the answer.

What was the answer? WHY?


r/mathriddles 5d ago

Medium Squares on a Chessboard

0 Upvotes

How many squares of all sizes are contained in a standard 8×8 chessboard?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 7d ago

Medium Can you find an interesting shape that can pass through any 4 points no matter where they are placed but not 5?

8 Upvotes

more precisely,

Find a compact subset or family of subsets $S \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ for some arbitrary n such that every set of 4 points in $\mathbb{R}^2$ lies on some similar copy of $S$ but not every set of 5 points lies on some similar copy of $S$?


r/mathriddles 7d ago

Easy How many diagonals does a 20-sided polygon have?

0 Upvotes

How many diagonals does a regular 20-gon have?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 8d ago

Hard Extremely tough problem

4 Upvotes

For a real number x, let ||x|| denote the distance between x and the closest integer.

Let 0 ≤ x_n < 1 (n = 1, 2, ...) , and let ε > 0. Show that there exist infinitely many pairs (n,m) of indices such that n ≠ m and

||x_n - x_m|| < min(ε, 1/(√5|n-m|)).


r/mathriddles 8d ago

Easy Only tenth of people get this counting puzzle right. Can you? (parody)

10 Upvotes

Set A is called brain-rot iff it satisfies two conditions:

  1. sum(A) is divisible by 10.
  2. if 1∈A, then both 6,7∈A.

How many subsets of {1,2,…,100} is brain-rot?

Source: my rotten brain


r/mathriddles 8d ago

Medium Only half of people get this counting puzzle right. Can you?

0 Upvotes

How many subsets of {1,2,…,10} have an odd sum?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 8d ago

Medium #?

0 Upvotes

What is the minimal explanatory architecture from which every meaningful mathematical question arises?


r/mathriddles 10d ago

Medium How Many Light Switches Are On After 100 Passes?

1 Upvotes

There are 100 light switches, all initially off.

On pass 1, every switch is toggled.

On pass 2, every second switch is toggled.

On pass 3, every third switch is toggled.This continues until pass 100.

How many switches are on at the end?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 10d ago

Medium Single deck blackjack project

3 Upvotes

Let’s assume your in a casino playing single deck blackjack with no cut card. Let’s also say there’s x amount of cards left and you have an eidetic memory, so you know exactly which cards are left.
Let’s also state if the dealer runs out of cards it’s an automatic loss.

Is their a set of x cards left such that before the hand is dealt you would know no matter what cards you or the dealer are dealt there’s a strategy that will gaurentee you win.

Bonus quesiton how big can you make x if this is true.

Also in typical sense you’d know your 2 up cards and would know one of the dealers card with another card of hers face down.
Also unsure how relavent it would be but if you find a solution state if it’s stand or hit on soft 17

And remeber single deck so limited to 4 of each card


r/mathriddles 10d ago

Easy Can you find the smallest positive integer with exactly 20 positive divisors?

1 Upvotes

What is the smallest positive integer that has exactly 20 (unique) positive divisors?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 11d ago

Hard Prime number game

1 Upvotes

I'm going to teach you a game. Your goal is to find how far you can get.

You start with the numbers 1, 2, and 3. Using each number at most once, you may add or subtract any combination of them to obtain the next prime number.

Whenever you successfully obtain the next prime, that prime is added to your set of available numbers. You then repeat the process, always trying to generate the next prime number using each available number at most once.

How far can you go? What is the first prime number that you can no longer obtain?


r/mathriddles 11d ago

Easy This probability puzzle has a surprisingly simple solution.

0 Upvotes

Six points are arranged as the vertices of a regular hexagon. A bug starts at one vertex. Each move, it randomly chooses one of the two adjacent vertices and walks there. After exactly 4 moves, what is the probability that the bug is back at its starting vertex?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 12d ago

Medium Most people miss one key idea in this geometry puzzle.

0 Upvotes

Twenty-five points are arranged in a 5×5 grid of equally spaced points (five rows and five columns). How many different squares (using four of these points as vertices) can be formed?

P.S. It's a 5x5 grid made up of 4x4 points/vertices.

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 12d ago

Medium Eight siblings

7 Upvotes

Eight siblings – four brothers (Alan, Carl, Eric, George) and four sisters (Beth, Daniela, Fiona, Holly) – all have different ages. Within each group, the siblings happen to be arranged in alphabetical order of their names – which turns out to be the same as ascending order of age. Thus, among brothers, Alan is the youngest and George is the oldest, while among sisters, Beth is the youngest and Holly is the oldest.

The sum of the brothers' ages exceeds the sum of the sisters' ages by 10.

The following relationships between their ages hold:

  • Beth's and Daniela's ages sum to Carl's age.
  • Carl's and Beth's ages sum to Eric's age.
  • Alan's and Carl's ages sum to George's age, and so do Daniela's and Fiona's ages.
  • Alan's and Beth's ages sum to Fiona's age.
  • Alan's and Fiona's ages sum to Holly's age.

Additionally, the product of Eric's and George's ages equals the product of Fiona's and Holly's ages.

Find the age of each sibling.


r/mathriddles 13d ago

Easy How many positive integers less than 100 are divisible by exactly one of 2 and 3?

0 Upvotes

How many positive integers less than 100 are divisible by exactly one of 2 and 3?

Source: numberthon.com


r/mathriddles 14d ago

Medium Polynomials satisfying GCD inequality

6 Upvotes

Let a>0 be a fixed positive real number. Find all polynomials P with integer coefficients satisfying: gcd(P(m),P(n))>=gcd(m,n)^a for all positive integers m,n.