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An idealized coin consists of a circular disk of zero thickness which, when thrown in the air and allowed to fall, will rest with either side face up ("heads" H or "tails" T) ...

The function frac(x) giving the fractional (noninteger) part of a real number x. The symbol {x} is sometimes used instead of frac(x) (Graham et al. 1994, p. 70; Havil 2003, ...

In a 1847 talk to the Académie des Sciences in Paris, Gabriel Lamé (1795-1870) claimed to have proven Fermat's last theorem. However, Joseph Liouville immediately pointed out ...

The natural logarithm lnx is the logarithm having base e, where e=2.718281828.... (1) This function can be defined lnx=int_1^x(dt)/t (2) for x>0. This definition means that e ...

Two integers are relatively prime if they share no common positive factors (divisors) except 1. Using the notation (m,n) to denote the greatest common divisor, two integers m ...

A sultan has granted a commoner a chance to marry one of his n daughters. The commoner will be presented with the daughters one at a time and, when each daughter is ...

There are many unsolved problems in mathematics. Some prominent outstanding unsolved problems (as well as some which are not necessarily so well known) include 1. The ...

A Fourier series is an expansion of a periodic function f(x) in terms of an infinite sum of sines and cosines. Fourier series make use of the orthogonality relationships of ...

The Fourier transform is a generalization of the complex Fourier series in the limit as L->infty. Replace the discrete A_n with the continuous F(k)dk while letting n/L->k. ...

The smallest positive composite number and the first even perfect square. Four is the smallest even number appearing in a Pythagorean triple: 3, 4, 5. In the numerology of ...