Year 2012 - Volume 48

Bruce Henry


The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) is in the late stages of developing the Senior Secondary National Curriculum for Years 11 and 12  Mathematics.

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Sean M. Stewart

The problem of integrating simple expressions containing inverse functions relies on the well-known method of integration by parts.

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Michael A. B. Deakin

The title of this column is a phrase that became a catchcry of the 1960s, and although the problem that it encapsulates is still very much with us (indeed even more acute than it was back then), it is less in vogue nowadays.

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Yan Huang

Mathematics is a widely misunderstood subject. The common perception of mathematics is the subject filled with rules and procedures driven by very little motivation or meaning.

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Various

Q1381 It is commonly believed that the minute hand and the hour hand on a clock are in exactly symmetrical positions when the time is 10:08 and 42 seconds.

(a) Without detailed calculations, prove that this is wrong.

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Various

Q1371 Consider shuffles of a standard 52-card pack.  (See the article in volume 47 number 3 for terminology and basic information.)  Let rev be the shuffle which reverses the pack - that is, the first card is swapped with the last, the second with the second last, and so on.

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Bruce Henry

Welcome to this issue of Parabola incorporating Function. The issue starts with David Angell's article on solving a class of second order recurrences.

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Bruce Henry


Welcome to this issue of Parabola incorporating Function. The issue starts with David Angell's article on solving a class of second order recurrences.

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Farid Haggar

A popular classical problem can be stated as follows:

There are five monks, one monkey and pile of coconuts on a desert island.

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Michael A. B. Deakin

My title for this column is that of an influential book, first published in 1935 by the American psychologist L. L. Thurstone.

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Various

Q1391 Jack looked at the clock next to his front door as he left home one afternoon to visit Jill and watch a TV programme.  Arriving exactly as the programme started, he set out for home again when it finished one hour later.

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Various

Q1381 It is commonly believed that the minute hand and the hour hand on a clock are in exactly symmetrical positions when the time is 10:08 and 42 seconds.

(a) Without detailed calculations, prove that this is wrong.

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Bruce Henry

As we go to press there has been a lot of excitement in mathematics about the proof of the ABC conjecture.

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Michael A. B. Deakin

This column's topic will be a theorem in the mathematical theory of games.

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Bill McKee

This article is about a family of polynomials introduced by James H.

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David Angell, Chris Angstmann, Peter Brown, Michael Cowling, David Crocker, Bruce Henry (Director), David Hunt, Tyrone Liang, Adrian Miranda

Problem 1

The infinite nested radical
c = 1 + 2 1 + 2 1 + 2 1 + 2

converges.

Find c.

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Editor

Competition Winners – Senior Division

First Prize

John Papantoniou                                    Sydney Gr

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Various

Q1401 Solve the recurrence relation

a(n)=6a(n−1)−9a(n−2) ,a(0)=2 ,a(1)=21 .

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Various

Q1391 Jack looked at the clock next to his front door as he left home one afternoon to visit Jill and watch a TV programme.  Arriving exactly as the programme started, he set out for home again when it finished one hour later.

Read the article in PDF