# Reversing Relations

The Book of Common Prayer includes a Table of Kindred and Affinity that lists prohibited degrees of marriage in the Church of England. For example, a man may not marry his daughter’s son’s wife, and a woman may not marry her husband’s mother’s father. In this case, the two proscriptions correspond — they describe the same relationship “from both sides,” so this union is prohibited to both parties in the relationship. But is this always the case? Is each union that’s denied to a man also denied to the woman? (The table lists only heterosexual unions.) It’s not immediately clear; 25 prohibited degrees are listed for each sex, and our language makes it hard to “reverse” the description of a relationship mentally.

In 1989 Manchester Polytechnic mathematician M.D. Stern worked out a notation that makes this easy. Use 1 to denote a male and 0 a female, and use this code to denote relationships between individuals:

00 spouse
01 parent
10 child
11 sibling

Now, to show the relationship between one person and another, write one digit for the first person followed by a sequence of three more digits — two to represent the relationship and one to represent the sex of the second person. So, taking the example above, a man’s daughter’s son’s wife would be denoted:

1 100 101 000

To interpret the same relationship from the woman’s point of view, we just reverse the order of the digits:

0 001 010 011

He is her husband’s mother’s father.

Applying this to the prohibited degrees in the table, Stern found that every prohibition for a man corresponds to an inverse prohibition for a woman — there are no prospective marriages that would be prohibited to one party but not the other.

(M.D. Stern, “A Notational Device for Analysing Relationships,” Mathematical Gazette 73:463 [March 1989], 37-40.)

# More Prime Images

Inspired by James McKee’s Trinity Hall prime, physics researcher Gilles Esposito-Farese (of the self-descriptive pangram) has worked out that this 2,258-digit prime number:

53084469288402965415857953902888840109250315594591772197851275320
59910735745658243457138160802170063601085186072703319516241231606
86858731799078163479147444957979157038109676507221794134810159187
99946828292780972255445123198357952762990102770564813212521111380
68349356142222060588948481473772481328151681322128358047354205784
70540373426870045719371801557904317944239925854314103160489406736
99060594293236420918525997085793619098456109204165164418661475892
01109662597018777150106134376006906212249382614768188594613749419
81773446881694503562852062669737115544391406458301430146238093071
02894114746014041621168186006763973309046545159248106457826024237
26295585692705999572335711556642484343647905815411003310539537633
41950800883057333667657184487306007957156203546941504909814030908
34965188540308705963440466656812927154037805823279990648845960204
63331562527077555356154644447566217362506777244670808476000607805
03811498534406491478259767678703610171309197408223291080531370612
62650405840051780819121599354652788179742394248611555080762986718
96826790066089904275315943211982421764246751417927128802586925712
27099955857542532516878558368313422620050604202219808465512659996
23064148740328947837353070554937134618609926277437895029980245174
01474719468068984349536087237870814923058804265001775440222136692
19497268319149971553957338283899722324260346170316327132892172432
93414823219221781561202067498414863282586486396494894086735311984
87542808513750059732993808185407922249214024344950525276107816857
04707717662079906664246810240363777462148167179131661698526525933
27455038156208677911356439404008565505518270407112444336214476635
90179341953108431111005767617305509479336875319574363889314007557
80075653313610206913250864729950372237487765836958630210102788727
36316538995288936776915812144955490067485142591851239438281782980
49266403870939263057525714093639423600887115586024837895236645603
39309565092104096166270212323904043359754209734891624081548291170
80360665817900770688282037236785560524155682291636091743772117655
59023604955032646389401878907537621901104165756011023874877122701
96250964612099585830958920626319449976949804992786372992220222097
60635584717392117583345925369515540556572166535535975903825177497
033726681165539444448225642477607711558401523711

renders these 7,500 digits in binary:

This is a 30,000-digit prime:

And this is self-explanatory:

More here.

(Thanks, Gilles.)

# Nine Lives

In the 1960s, Soviet mathematician Vladimir Arnold mapped the square image of a cat to a torus, “stretched” (sheared) it as shown on that surface, then sliced the resulting image into pieces and recomposed them into a square.

As the process is repeated, any two points in the image quickly become separated, but, surprisingly, after sufficient repetitions the original image reappears.

A discrete analogue is at right. As the transformation is repeated, the image appears increasingly random or disordered, but the underlying cat can be glimpsed making occasional appearances, sometimes as a ghostly suggestion, sometimes in multiple smaller images, and occasionally (yowling, one imagines) even upside down.

It reappears again, unhurt, at the 300th iteration.

It’s called Arnold’s cat map. You can try it yourself here.

# Advance Notice

In his 1966 book New Mathematical Diversions From Scientific American, Martin Gardner predicted that the millionth digit of π would be 5. (At the time the value was known only to about 10,000 decimal places.) He was reprinting a column on π from 1960 and included this in the addendum:

It will probably not be long until pi is known to a million decimals. In anticipation of this, Dr. Matrix, the famous numerologist, has sent me a letter asking that I put on record his prediction that the millionth digit of pi will be found to be 5. His calculation is based on the third book of the King James Bible, chapter 14, verse 16 (it mentions the number 7, and the seventh word has five letters), combined with some obscure calculation involving Euler’s constant and the transcendental number e.

He’d intended this as a hoax, but eight years later the computers discovered he was right.

# Sphericons

Fit two identical 90-degrees cones base to base, slice the resulting shape in half vertically, and give one of the halves a quarter turn. The result is a sphericon, a solid that rolls with a bemusing meander: Where the original double cone rolls only in circles, the sphericon puts first one conical sector and then the other in contact with a flat surface beneath it, giving it a smooth but undulating trajectory sustained by a fixed center of mass.

And that’s just the start. “Two sphericons placed next to each other can roll on each other’s surfaces,” writes David Darling in The Universal Book of Mathematics. “Four sphericons arranged in a square block can all roll around one another simultaneously. And eight sphericons can fit on the surface of one sphericon so that any one of the outer solids can roll on the surface of the central one.” See the video for more.

(Thanks, Matthias.)

# Nets and Tabs

A neat little fact pointed out by George Pólya and Donald Coxeter: If a convex polyhedron is unfolded and presented as a flat “net” fitted with tabs for gluing, as in a children’s activity book, the smallest number of tabs needed is just one less than the number of vertices in the assembled shape. The net above, with 7 tabs, can be assembled into a hexahedron with 8 vertices, and the one below, with 19 tabs, can be assembled into a dodecahedron with 20.

(Nick Lord, “Nets and Tabs,” Mathematical Gazette 73:464 [June 1989], 93-96.)

# Miwin’s Dice

Physicist Michael Winkelmann devised these nontransitive dice in 1975.

• Die I has sides 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9.
• Die II has sides 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9.
• Die III has sides 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8.

Collectively the 18 faces bear the numbers 1 to 9 twice. The numbers on each die sum to 30 and have an arithmetic mean of 5.

But Die I beats Die 2, Die 2 beats Die 3, and Die 3 beats Die 1, each with probability 17/36.

# The Silurian Hypothesis

Complex life has existed on Earth’s land surface for about 400 million years, and our civilization has been here for only a tiny fraction of that. If another industrial society had arisen millions of years ago, what traces could we still hope to find?

Astrobiologists Gavin Schmidt and Adam Frank point out that, while we might search the geologic record for evidence of plastics, synthetic pollutants, and increased metal concentrations, that expectation is based only on our own history, and a more enlightened civilization might leave a smaller footprint by using more sustainable practices (indeed, such a society is likely to survive longer).

Ironically, a poorly managed industrial civilization may deplete dissolved oxygen in the oceans, leading to an increase in organic material in the sediment, which can serve as a source of future fossil fuels. “Thus, the prior industrial activity would have actually given rise to the potential for future industry via their own demise.”

See the link below for the full paper.

(Gavin A. Schmidt and Adam Frank, “The Silurian Hypothesis: Would It Be Possible to Detect an Industrial Civilization in the Geological Record?”, International Journal of Astrobiology 18:2 [2019], 142-150.)

# Pangrammatic Loops

A marvelous variation on self-inventorying lists, from the inimitable Lee Sallows:

Recalling that a self-enumerating pangram corresponds to a closed loop of length 1, here follows a loop of length 2, which is to say, a pair of pangrams that enumerate each other. The pangrams are both minimal in the sense of containing none but essential letters with no “and”s or other devices openly or surreptitously added.

ONE A, ONE B, ONE C, ONE D, THIRTYONE E, FOUR F, ONE G, FIVE H, FIVE I, ONE J, ONE K, ONE L, ONE M, TWENTYTWO N, SEVENTEEN O, ONE P, ONE Q, SEVEN R, FOUR S, ELEVEN T, THREE U, FIVE V, FOUR W, ONE X, THREE Y, ONE Z.

ONE A, ONE B, ONE C, ONE D, THIRTYTWO E, SEVEN F, ONE G, FOUR H, FIVE I, ONE J, ONE K, TWO L, ONE M, TWENTY N, NINETEEN O, ONE P, ONE Q, SEVEN R, THREE S, NINE T, FOUR U, SEVEN V, THREE W, ONE X, THREE Y, ONE Z.

An alternative (non-minimal) pair includes plural s’s:

ONE A, ONE B, ONE C, ONE D, TWENTYSEVEN E’S, SIX F’S, ONE G, THREE H’S, SIX I’S, ONE L, TWENTY N’S, SIXTEEN O’S, ONE P, ONE Q, SIX R’S, NINETEEN S’S, TWELVE T’S, FOUR U’S, FOUR V’S, FIVE W’S, THREE X’S, FOUR Y’S, ONE Z.

ONE A, ONE B, ONE C, ONE D, TWENTYNINE E’S, FIVE F’S, ONE G, THREE H’S, SEVEN I’S, ONE J, ONE K, TWO L’S, ONE M, TWENTY N’S, SIXTEEN O’S, ONE P, ONE Q, SIX R’S, TWENTY S’S, TEN T’S, FOUR U’S, THREE V’S, FOUR W’S, FIVE X’S, THREE Y’S, ONE Z.

In similar vein, pangrammatic loops of length 3 follow, but now in shorthand, using arabic numerals to stand for number words, i.e. 1 = one, 2 = two, etc. The first list is enumerated by the second, the second by the third and the third by the first. The 1st loop contains minimal pangrams, the 2nd, pangrams with plural s’s:

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z
1  1  1  1 31  5  1  5  9  1  1  1  1 20 16  1  1  5  5 11  1  4  3  4  2  1
1  1  1  1 28  7  1  3  8  1  1  2  1 20 18  1  1  5  2  8  3  6  3  2  3  1
1  1  1  1 31  2  5  9  7  1  1  1  1 16 15  1  1  5  3 16  1  3  6  2  3  1

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z
1  1  1  1 32  5  2  3  7  1  1  1  1 22 18  1  1  3 19 14  2  6  7  2  3  1
1  1  1  1 32  3  2  6  6  1  1  1  1 20 18  1  1  6 19 16  2  4  7  2  3  1
1  1  1  1 27  2  2  5  8  1  1  1  1 19 17  1  1  5 21 14  2  2  6  5  3  1


Here also a minimal pangrammatic loop of length 4 (no equivalent using plural s’s exists):

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z
1  1  1  1 25  4  2  4  7  1  1  2  1 16 18  1  1  5  5 11  3  4  5  4  2  1
1  1  1  1 28  9  2  3  7  1  1  2  1 16 18  1  1  6  3  9  5  7  5  2  2  1
1  1  1  1 30  3  3  5  9  1  1  1  1 20 15  1  1  3  5 12  1  5  6  3  2  1
1  1  1  1 30  6  1  6  8  1  1  2  1 17 14  1  1  6  2 12  1  5  4  2  3  1


“There exist no minimal pangrammatic loops of length 5 or longer until we reach lengths 10, 33, and 55 (no plural s’s) and lengths 15, 22, 23, 207 and 312 (with plural s’s),” he adds. “This completes what I believe to be an exhaustive survey of all self-enumerating minimal pangrammatic loops.”

(Thanks, Lee.)

# Cubes and Squares

MATLAB’s Loren Shure devised this lovely “proof without words” of Nicomachus’ theorem, that the sum of the first n cubes is the square of the nth triangular number:

$\displaystyle 1^{3}+2^{3}+3^{3}+\cdots +n^{3}=\left(1+2+3+\cdots +n\right)^{2},$

R.J. Stroeker of Erasmus University wrote, “Every beginning student of number theory surely must have marveled at [this] miraculous fact.”