Fractals are a new 21st century mathematics. They are patterns that repeat themselves at various scales. This one is based on the odd numbers in Pascal’s triangle. We learn to create it easily by using Conditional Formatting which enables us to color cells or text based on a quantitative relationship. To turn Pascal’s triangle into …
Most museums with math exhibits have a Pascal’s triangle made up of pegs with balls falling down between them and bouncing off of them. One of the things they want to show is probability and the Normal or Bell curve produced by these balls as they fall down most of us are familiar with. This …
Another famous pattern, Pascal’s triangle, is easy to construct and explore on spreadsheets. Create a formula for any cell that adds the two cells in a row (horizontal) above it. This pattern is like Fibonacci’s in that both are the addition of two cells, but Pascal’s is spatially different and produces extraordinary results. Pascal’’ triangle …
Parentheses are very important in spreadsheets because like all programming, spreadsheet formulas have to be very specific. A big formula, especially one like Viete’s approximation of pi, likely will require us to think both in parentheses and in creating formulas that naturally build a series. This one is quite interesting and you will know if …
Pennies to Heaven is a Fermi Problem, basically a “headmath” experiment. Fermi Problems, originally developed by Enrico Fermi, one of the greatest experimental and theoretical physicists of the 20th century, are real-world estimation problems. So we ask, “If we had a stack of pennies as tall as the Empire State Building, how big a room …
