The 38th edition of the Carnival of Mathematics went up at Catsynth on Friday. It includes A’s recent post about typical math teachers’ efforts to make their classes seem relevant to students. There’s a bunch of other neat stuff in the carnival — you should go and check it out! Of particular interest to me was Jon Ingram’s post on winning and losing at Nim. Nim is a very simple game, but there are a lot of really interesting results associated with it, and it’s the foundation for a lot of stuff in combinatorial game theory. His post is easy to understand even if you don’t have a lot of background in math.
We’re looking forward to hosting the 39th edition of the carnival here at It’s the Thought that Counts. To submit your entry, fill out the submission form by August 21.
August 18th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Hi there.
I’m glad you liked the post on Nim. I’m happy to write more about Nim, or combinatorial game theory, or indeed anything as work avoidance (school starts again in a little less than three weeks
) — let me know if there’s anything you’re interested in.