odditudes-and-weirdities

Happy Telephone Numbers Day! You may be surprised to learn that these aren't the telephone numbers associated with our individual telephones, but instead represent the number of ways that n number of telephones can be connected to each other for 2-way calls. For example, if you have 0 phones or 1 phone, there only 2-way "connection" possible is no connection at all. But if you have 2 phones, there are now 2 possibilities: no connection at all or the 2 phones connected to each other. This table shows the number of combinations possible when you have very few phones: You might notice that the number of combinations starts very small but then grows pretty quickly. This is one reason why it's impractical to set up a telephone network with equipment dedicated to every possible phone call combination. Actually writing and counting all those combinations would get tedious pretty quickly; fortunately there's a formula for that: Applying this formula, you can see just how

It's Triangular Numbers Day, the day we all joyously celebrate the triangular numbers ! The triangular numbers are the number of figures needed to create an equilateral triangle. They are also the numbers representing the sum of each of the natural numbers : 0 0+1 = 1 0+1+2 = 3 0+1+2+3 = 6 0+1+2+3+4 = 10 etc. This summation is probably the most useful characteristic of triangular numbers; after that they're probably more of a curiosity. A list of the start of the series can be found here . October 15 was chosen as Triangular Numbers Day because 10/15 is the latest date that can be formed using consecutive triangular numbers.

Today is Look at the Leaves Day! For New Jersey, this date seems a little early to be looking at leaves, at least from an autumnal foliage perspective. (If you're looking at leaves to try and identify a tree, this is a fairly good time of year to do that.) I guess I'm going to slip in a preview of things to come.  November 4, 2016 at Murray Hill October 28, 2017 at Duke Farms