tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-114399442012-01-31T17:07:10.526-08:00Train and strain your brain to entertain!Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.comBlogger7541100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-62627747211710349682012-01-29T13:00:00.000-08:002012-01-29T13:00:01.450-08:00

It wasn't that long ago when remembering passwords was a problem most people only ran across in spy movies. These days, with various assorted internet accounts everywhere, remembering your password, as well as making it difficult to figure out, is becoming more and more of a challenge. Fortunately, there are many memory techniques that can help. The first rule of internet security is that you

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-28966904073782371672012-01-26T13:00:00.000-08:002012-01-26T13:00:02.372-08:00

25 years ago today, Square One TV debuted on PBS! As a budding math geek, this show was a must-watch for me. If you're not familiar with Square One TV, it was a show teaching math using comedy skits, music videos, guest stars, and whatever else to teach mathematical concepts. Everything from basic arithmetic to geometry to somewhat-advanaced algebra was covered in a way that was fun and

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-80428963387929434742012-01-22T11:00:00.000-08:002012-01-22T11:00:01.871-08:00

I've talked about the modular arithmetic before, especially as it related to the day for any date feat. In this post, we're going to take it out of the calendar feat's shadow, and give it a starring role in its own feat! If you remember doing division before you learned about fractions, you remember doing problems such as 21 ÷ 4 = 5 remainder 1. Modular arithmetic is simply focusing on the

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-14301292754440948032012-01-19T11:00:00.000-08:002012-01-19T11:01:43.431-08:00

Shortly after lifehacker linked to my Day of the Week For Any Date post last fall, I was inspired to see how much further I could minimize the required work. Even I was surprised at the results of this effort, which I just released earlier this week as Day One. Instead of giving a day of the week for any date verbally, you ask the spectator for a meaningful year and month, and instantly create

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-1911275910242615592012-01-15T11:00:00.000-08:002012-01-15T11:00:01.381-08:00

I've had some fun with Wolfram|Alpha in previous posts, and now they can be made even more fun. Any Wolfram|Alpha search, without any programming, can be turned into a widget you can place on your website as easily as embedding a video! In July of last year, I posted about a trick with Wolfram|Alpha, which the widgets make it even easier to present. Instead of typing everything in directly,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-55435999798383759302012-01-12T11:00:00.000-08:002012-01-12T11:00:07.016-08:00

It's time for January's snippets. This month, we're going to catch up with the latest round of math-related videos! • Back in December, mathemusician Vi Hart posted the first of a 3-part video series she dubbed Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant. The second part has just been posted, with the third part expected in about 2 weeks: While waiting for more fun from Vi, you

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-68786441745202890382012-01-08T10:30:00.000-08:002012-01-08T10:57:19.337-08:00

Martin Gardner once said that no other geometrical pattern has been so thoroughly exploited for recreational purposes as the checkerboard. That's especially true at Grey Matters, where you can find puzzles like the Knight's Tour, Knight Shift, and others. Today, however, we focus on the queens! This week's episode of Scam School returns to the Stanford Chess Club with another classic chess

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-2627855479884462702012-01-05T10:30:00.000-08:002012-01-05T10:31:47.665-08:00

You're probably wondering why I'm reviewing three books in one post. All three are concerned with magic square routines, and there's also been some mingling of influence among the books. In addition, they all came to my attention nearly simultaneously. In fact, the author e-mailed me and offered to send me review copies of their books literally within minutes of each other. IntroductionAll

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-61919023548980491552012-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:002012-01-01T12:00:00.745-08:00

It's January first, and the calendars around here are already mixed up! It will take someone with a good mind for puzzles, and with a thorough knowledge of the calendar. It will take someone like...you, perhaps? To kick off 2012, I posted a new puzzle in the Mental Gym, which I call the Sliding Calendar Puzzle! It's a blending of two feats already in the Mental Gym, the Day of the Week For Any

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-50029912296755330502011-12-29T12:00:00.000-08:002011-12-29T12:00:00.971-08:00

As the last post of 2011, I thought this would be the perfect time to look back on Grey Matters, and take a look at some of the standout posts of the year. JanuaryJanuary kicked off the year by introducing the design you see now. Besides just a new look, the site also received a new structure, with the Mental Gym and Presentation sections moving on to blogspot. Features were also added to all of

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-23686163350233948082011-12-22T09:30:00.000-08:002011-12-22T09:30:00.710-08:00

NOTE: Since this coming Sunday is Christmas, I will be spending that day with my loved ones, and there will be no post that day. Happy Holidays! I've spent much of the year teaching you about memory feats, and making you work and think. It's the holiday season now, and it's time to relax. So, for a change, sit back, relax, and watch other perform the types of feats I've discussed on this site!

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-14493235101209204342011-12-18T14:00:00.000-08:002011-12-21T19:15:14.076-08:00

Magicians refer to what most would call “tricks” as “effects”. Anytime you have an effect, however, people are going to look for a cause. The search for the cause naturally takes the audience from the effect itself to the performer themselves. In analyzing how to guide an audience's perceptions of cause and effect, superheroes often prove to be useful as an analytical tool. In past times,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-81642589923825040952011-12-15T10:00:00.000-08:002011-12-15T10:00:04.041-08:00

December's snippets are here! We're about to wind up one calendar year, and begin another one, so this edition is dedicated to the calendar! • I've long been familiar with the use of knuckles as a mnemonic for the number of days in each month, but I've never seen this knuckle approach for determining the day of the week for any date in the current year! Unfortunately, it on works as written for

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-89614054503310903402011-12-11T11:30:00.000-08:002011-12-11T11:30:26.682-08:00

(NOTE: Check out the other posts in The Secrets of Nim series.) In past posts on Nim, I've discussed multi-pile standard Nim, multi-pile Misère Nim, and how to better visualize your moves for either kind of multi-pile Nim. I've even discussed Werner Miller's brilliant Wise-Guy Nim variation, in which you allow the other player to decide whether the game will be standard or Misère, after which

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-3481657067645292082011-12-11T10:00:00.000-08:002011-12-11T12:43:33.957-08:00

I have re-located the Grey Matters RSS Feed! Here are the new locations: Atom Feed: http://headinside.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default RSS Feed: http://headinside.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss The old address, which began with http://members.cox.net/ is no longer in operation.

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-87427571102608443922011-12-08T13:30:00.000-08:002011-12-08T13:34:13.954-08:00

5 months ago, I posted my first Wolfram|Alpha trick. The time for the second one has come! We start with a helpful lead-in from NumberPhile. In mathematics, a factorial is simply the product of a positive integer (whole number) n multiplied by all the other positive integers less than n. 4 factorial, for example, would be equal to 4 times all the positive whole numbers less than 4, or 4 × 3 × 2

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-69418205750923016042011-12-04T10:00:00.000-08:002011-12-04T10:00:00.461-08:00

Note: This post first appeared on Grey Matters in 2007. Since then, I've made it a sort of annual tradition to post it every December, with the occasional update. Enjoy! Since the focus of this blog is largely math and memory feats, it probably won't be a surprise to learn that my favorite Christmas carol is The 12 Days of Christmas. After all, it's got a long list and it's full of numbers! On

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-63282736957016562342011-12-01T10:00:00.000-08:002011-12-01T16:27:47.092-08:00

This week's Scam School episode uses an iPhone, and it reminded me that quite a few episodes have focused on scams that either take advantage of iOS devices (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch), or possibly could use these features. I'll apologize to Android users right now, as this post will specifically focus on the iOS platform. For starters, here's this week's episode: Update: The required graphics

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-44869551947729887422011-11-27T11:00:00.000-08:002011-12-11T12:58:07.152-08:00

When it comes to memorizing various things, numbers are often considered the toughest challenge. How do you turn something so abstract into something easily imagined, and more importantly, something easily recalled? The most common systems used to remember numbers are the Major/Peg system, which I cover in these links and in these videos. Alternatively, there's also the DOMINIC system. The

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-31216626237635236032011-11-24T13:30:00.000-08:002011-11-24T13:32:00.138-08:00

This week's Scam School features yet another creation by Martin Gardner, as submitted by yours truly! This one is a prediction, but one that is very clean and appears very fair to your audience. It's also a handy impromptu effect to know, since it's adaptable to so many different props. In this week's episode of Scam School, this routine is performed simply with paper, pens, and coasters:

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-31368784590026990902011-11-20T09:00:00.000-08:002011-11-20T09:00:02.156-08:00

When peforming the classic Day of the Week For Any Date feat, it often makes a difference how you do it. Most performances aim for the instantaneous Rain-Man type of reaction. The required calculations and/or mnemonics can make this challenging, so performers often use various touches than can simultaneously give them time to mentally retrieve the information, while helping, at least in

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-56676864229371118122011-11-17T11:30:00.000-08:002011-11-17T11:32:11.435-08:00

November's snippets are here, and we're going to try and jog your memory with them! • There's a new memory technique teaching site on the web called Memory Dojo. Joining requires a paid membership, but there are several free goodies available on the site, as well. Most notably, there are the video lessons from the site available on their YouTube channel. • Mental Case for Mac OS X has just

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-66469564877702254772011-11-13T13:00:00.000-08:002011-11-13T13:07:07.891-08:00

With almost every memory technique, visualization is the key, but it's usually discusses as visualization in your head. We live in an age of powerful computer graphics, so why not take advantage of this to bring your visualizations out of your head and onto the screen? There's an amazing array of software and websites out there to help you do this, most of which hasn't even been considered for

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-33222164083120346142011-11-10T10:30:00.000-08:002011-11-10T10:31:10.346-08:00

This Friday is 11-11-11. It is, of course, Rememberance Day. Many others, are simply taking advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime date as a reason to celebrate, including countless couples who are getting married on that date. As I did for 9/9/9 here and here, and for 10/10/10 here, I'll be marking the day by looking at the qualities of the number 11, and what kind of fun we can have with it.

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-80662050600665985492011-11-06T13:00:00.000-08:002011-11-06T13:00:12.673-08:00

Persi Diaconis, the Stanford professor who discovered that 7 riffle shuffles are the minimum required to properly mix the deck, and Ron Graham, the UCSD professor who popularized the Erdős number concept (The mathematical world's equivalent of a Kevin Bacon number), have just released a much-talked about book titled Magical Mathematics. Is it any good? No less than the late, great founder of the

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-50295965122323293742011-11-03T12:00:00.000-07:002011-11-03T13:49:49.401-07:00

Quite a few unusual math videos have come down the pike recently, so I thought I'd round them up here and share them with you. Most of these include material I've rarely, if ever, come across before. Over in the Mental Gym, I teach how to square 2-digit numbers. If you've mastered that, you may have wondered about going beyond 100. In the following video, you can learn how to handle squaring

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-64652582515131404712011-10-30T15:30:00.000-07:002011-10-31T14:23:32.507-07:00

When I posted my Day for any Date Online Toolbox, a commenter named Jay notified about a method of getting the year key that was new to me, known by the rather bizarre name of "Odd + 11". I recently ran across it again in the Scientific American article, What Day Is Doomsday? How to Mentally Calculate the Day of the Week for Any Date, so I figured it was time to give it a closer look. The

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-58193825556127129062011-10-27T13:15:00.000-07:002011-10-27T13:15:17.366-07:00

(NOTE: Check out the other posts in The Secrets of Nim series.) In the very first Secrets of Nim post, I discussed a variation of the game where you start at zero, and add objects up to certain total, such as 21. What happens if, instead of adding, you were to multiply? Just as with previous versions, we need to start by laying down a few ground rules. First, what's the goal? Since we're going

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-22172645509658763172011-10-23T16:00:00.000-07:002011-10-23T16:00:08.457-07:00

Halloween is a little over a week away. To add to the fun, I have a little challenge for you! Using my free Verbatim 2 app, try and memorize a Halloween poem by the time Halloween itself arrives! This purpose of this challenge, of course, to help you learn both how to use the app, and to have a fun poem you can recite at your halloween gathering! If you've never used the Verbatim app before,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-10218361615547541862011-10-20T20:00:00.000-07:002011-10-20T20:00:08.991-07:00

Michael Frink, who developed a great blackjack presentation for the card memory feat in the Mental Gym, is back with more ideas of interest to Grey Matters readers! This time around, he's developed a complete series of videos to help improve your mental math skills! The entire set of Michael Frink's Mental Mathematics videos is available on this page. Here's the first video, which starts you

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-50157583648470834692011-10-16T12:00:00.000-07:002011-10-16T12:01:37.761-07:00

BIG NEWS: The mobile update to my Train Your Brain and Entertain (TYBE) memory training software is done and tested! It is now available for sale at Lybrary.com for only $9.99 (a permanent $20 drop in price!). In this post, I'll show you the new look and features of TYBE. If you previously purchased TYBE from Lybrary.com, the new version is available in your Lybrary.com account already. Simply

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-57918777042848907392011-10-13T15:00:00.000-07:002011-10-13T15:00:35.230-07:00

October's snippets are here! This time around, there's lots of goodies for those of you interested in memory techniques! • First, a big thank you to Lifehacker, for linking to Grey Matters in the post How to Quickly Figure Out the Day of the Week Any Date Falls On. Since that link, more than 20,000 new visitors have come to check out this site! The recent broadcast of National Geographic's Brain

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-59955102249404508612011-10-09T10:00:00.000-07:002011-10-09T10:00:21.817-07:00

Quick, name any city, state, or country! Before you look up the population of that geographic area, what would you guess is the leftmost digit of that number? Similarly, what would you guess the odds are of that leftmost digit being, say, a 1? Many people guess that the odds are no different from it being any other number, so they say 10%. While there are 10 digits, 0 can't be the leftmost

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-78694225135777278642011-10-06T12:30:00.000-07:002011-10-06T12:35:21.957-07:00

Although it's been around a while, interest in the Person-Action-Object, or “PAO” memory system has risen with the release of the Moonwalking With Einstein. In this post, we'll take a closer look at the nature of the PAO system. Despite the focus of the system's name, there's actually a whole other part of the system that needs to be learned along with it. This first part has been used since

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-33023164592740040232011-10-02T17:45:00.000-07:002011-10-02T17:45:20.519-07:00

It's one thing to learn how to perform amazing mental feats, but it can also be very instructive to watch how others present their mental abilities. For today's post, I've gathered some footage of some amazing math and memory demonstrations found on YouTube. We'll start off with Ron White, "The Memory Guy". Why start with him? He's very generously posted and linked my work on memorizing US

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-77085542979828529652011-09-29T17:30:00.000-07:002011-09-29T17:30:54.841-07:00

Michael Daniels, the webmaster behind the Mind Magician site, has just released a new PDF eBook called Speed Dating. This eBook is his approach to one of my favorite feats, being able to name the day of the week for any given calendar date. Naturally, I couldn't resist taking a closer look. Here are my thoughts on the bullet points from the Lybrary.com ad for Speed Dating. * Easy calculations

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-81482280271232563612011-09-25T14:00:00.000-07:002011-09-25T14:00:06.965-07:00

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I try to stress both memory and understanding on this blog, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at what astronomical scale really means in human

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-67588692721252304752011-09-22T13:30:00.000-07:002011-09-22T13:30:05.395-07:00

The author of Mind Performance Hacks has a new book out, called Mindhacker: 60 Tips, Tricks, and Games to Take Your Mind to the Next Level. Disclaimer: I was provided with the book by the publisher without charge, who was asked by the authors personally to provide Grey Matters with a copy. The thoughts below are purely mine as a result of going over the course on my own time for the purposed of

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-58753276282787920042011-09-18T15:00:00.000-07:002011-09-18T15:00:15.009-07:00

Back in July, I posted about people who cannot forget, in which I included a 60 Minutes report on the topic. The idea of not being able to forget has certainly captured CBS' imagination. This Tuesday, they're premiering a show about an investigator who can't forget any day of her life. There are a couple of emotional touches, of course. Most notably, her sister was murdered when they were

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-72025336128306602702011-09-15T17:30:00.000-07:002011-09-15T17:30:25.425-07:00

Just when I thought I'd seen every mathematical puzzle there was, along come some new ones! In this post, we'll take a quick look around the web at some astounding new puzzles that will challenge your mathemathics skill. I'll start off with one I have run across before in Martin Gardner's books. It's from our old friend James Grime, and concerns the best strategy for playing a simple card game:

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-83595173565159514602011-09-08T17:30:00.000-07:002011-09-09T00:12:03.145-07:00

Welcome to September's snippets! This time, it's a digital edition, with a heavy iTunes Store influence. If you like the idea of and app I mention, but don't find that you can use it on your system of choice, you can search for a similar app for your system using Quixey. (Note: There will be no post on Sunday, as Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. I will be getting

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-13040915870509936132011-09-04T14:45:00.000-07:002011-09-04T14:45:38.000-07:00

It's often joked that lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math. Being good at math can't always help you win, but it can help prepare you for that rare moment when that good opportunity comes along. Probably the single most famous example of this is Edward O. Thorp. Like many others before him, he knew that the odds of blackjack changed as the cards were dealt. However, thanks to the

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-19238232525783996282011-09-01T16:00:00.000-07:002011-09-04T02:15:58.577-07:00

Any type of math can inspire dread in a student, but algebra can cause confusion even students who have grasped all the prior math. Why not make it fun? Try performing an algebra-based magic trick, and then having your students work through the process with algebra to see why it works. Strangely enough, Scam School is a perfect resource for this. This week's episode of Scam School, featuring an

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-56275991953140124942011-08-28T08:00:00.000-07:002011-08-29T20:41:21.301-07:00

I teach a version of Day of the Week For Any Date feat, also known as the human calendar feat, here on Grey Matters, but I thought it was time to look into this feat in more detail. To help you get a more complete picture, I've put together a Day for any Date Online Toolbox. Best of all, each one of these tools can be accessed for free! Basics Gregorian Calendar: The calendar we use today wasn't

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-21566104436155197322011-08-25T17:00:00.000-07:002011-08-25T17:11:30.189-07:00

I talk quite a bit about standard memory techniques on Grey Matters, but sometimes you have to be creative not only in your mnemonics, but also in how you approach what you're memorizing. Today, we're going to look at some varying memory challenges, and learn how different people approached these tasks. One of my favorite memory feats on this site is the Day of the Week For Any Date feat. That

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-23458299766878520962011-08-21T13:30:00.000-07:002011-08-21T13:30:25.393-07:00

I'm seeing that it's time to start updating my original memory-training program, Train Your Brain and Entertain (TYBE)! The original is still available at Lybrary.com and from various magic dealers. However, it was written in 2005, which doesn't seem that long ago. Quite a bit has changed since then, especially considering that this was 2 years before the word “iPhone” would enter our vocabulary

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-8282694175377273952011-08-18T14:45:00.000-07:002011-08-18T14:46:25.047-07:00

Do you have paper, scissors, markers, and glue handy? Then you're not only ready to go back to school, you're ready for today's post! Today, you'll learn how to make some fascinating paper toys. They all have a mathematical basis, but we're not going to delve into the math behind them. Today's mission is simply the fun of creating and playing. Our first toy is called a flexagon. It's a

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-76627833497100331962011-08-14T13:00:00.000-07:002011-08-14T13:00:03.790-07:00

In August's snippets, we take another look at past links on Grey Matters that lead us to all new links! • If you're old enough to remember the 1990s, you're probably old enough to remember Kevin Trudeau's infomercials for his Mega Memory audio tapes. Thanks to the Internet Archive, the full audio of Mega Memory is now available as a free download! Also available are the full audio of Advanced

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-50521151147801144022011-08-11T08:30:00.000-07:002011-08-11T08:31:24.079-07:00

Scam School has just released an episode featuring yet another submission from Grey Matters! Besides showing you the trick, originally published by Martin Gardner in Mathematics Magic and Mystery, I'll teach you an extra tip that wasn't included in the episode! This trick is called The Purloined Objects: As Brian says, yes, it was I who came up with the sentence "ABsolutely, BriAn's ACtive

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-77467238065364732212011-08-07T11:45:00.000-07:002011-08-07T11:45:12.878-07:00

After creating Verbatim 2, I started thinking about apps for other types of memory feats. With most memory techniques and memory feats, it helps to have some sort of random data with which to practice. Having this as a mobile app means you could practice anywhere! With that in mind, I've begun work on Randomizer, another jQuery Mobile-based app. It's still in its early stages, but it's already

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-18435365336589584422011-08-04T15:45:00.000-07:002011-08-04T15:45:09.879-07:00

(Note: I originally published this back in April of 2009. With the school year about to begin, it seemed like a good time to repost it.) Did you ever wonder if there was a way for the average student to improve their learning abilities? Sure, there are simple tools, such as SQ3R, but what about a more comprehensive, detailed approach to learning as a whole? Memory trainer Graham Best, who once

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-1628842682203927332011-07-31T15:00:00.000-07:002011-07-31T15:01:35.943-07:00

Grey Matters favorite Werner Miller is back, and he's brought more of his amazing mathematical wizardry with him! If you're not already familiar with him, he's a retired mathematics teacher in Germany who has created some of the most original and compelling magic routines I've ever come across. He is the author of several magic books, including Ear-Marked, which is available in the Grey Matters

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-27726975494313190902011-07-28T13:30:00.000-07:002011-07-28T13:32:15.723-07:00

If I asked you to imagine a mathematical card trick, you'd probably picture some monstrosity such as the old 21-card trick. However, mathematics isn't just about numbers, it's about patterns. This week, Scam School taught a 5-person mind-reading trick that demonstrates this point dramatically. The trick in the following video is so amazing, one of the spectators refers to it as a Criss

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-88860894743331054652011-07-24T10:00:00.000-07:002011-07-24T10:09:55.338-07:00

The holy grail of memory is considered to be eidetic memory, what is more commonly as known as a photographic memory. Currently, there's plenty of skepticism about it. That's largely because there's so little scientific study about it, coupled with the rarity of finding anyone who truly has it. Fortunately, that's all starting to change. If you've spent more than 5 minutes reading Grey Matters,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-80184715402692043112011-07-21T16:00:00.000-07:002011-07-21T16:00:09.669-07:00

Last week I introduced the updated version of Verbatim. It's a free web app to help you with memorization that doesn't require any registration. Are there any other such web apps? Yes, and we'll cover many of them in this post. While all the web apps below can be used without registration, some of them do offer extra functionality if you do register. In those cases, registration itself is also

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-62110773439264030172011-07-17T15:00:00.000-07:002011-07-17T15:00:05.412-07:00

Over in the Mental Gym, there's a tutorial all about the unit circle, which I published back in February. It focuses mainly on radians, Pi, sine and cosine. I've had a few e-mails asking how to understand the other trigonometric functions: tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant. As of today, that new tutorial is up - Unit Circle 2: Trig Functions. As suggested on the first page of the new

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-89747942795429736922011-07-14T05:45:00.000-07:002011-07-14T05:45:42.591-07:00

2 years ago, I released a free iPhone/iPod Touch web app called Verbatim, which was designed to help you memorize texts of any lengths word-for-word, such as monologues, poems, presentations, scripture, scripts, song lyrics, and speeches. After hearing the feedback to the previous version, today I'm announcing the release of Verbatim 2.0! Yes, it's still free. Now it's easier than ever to use,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-74572891370841931602011-07-10T08:30:00.000-07:002011-07-10T08:30:07.061-07:00

July's snippets are here, and they're full of free mathematical goodies! • Marcus du Sautoy, whom you may remember from his BBC series, The Story of Maths, has definitely been keeping busy. Besides that documentary, you can find his 10-part podcast series A Brief History of Mathematics available for free via the BBC (or, strangely, as an audiobook for sale). This is a great introduction to the

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-22461308261876221102011-07-07T10:00:00.000-07:002011-07-07T10:00:25.210-07:00

Ever do one of those tricks where you have someone pick a number, and have them do things like add 5, double it, subtract 4, divide by 2, subtract their original number, and you determine that the answer they got was 3? As many people realize when you're doing such a trick, the whole process boils down to an algebraic formula that applies to any number. Today, we're going to turn that process on

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-42188531100589876222011-07-03T08:00:00.000-07:002011-08-30T05:31:05.492-07:00

.flexme td div { text-align:center; } (NOTE: Check out the other posts in The Secrets of Nim series.) We're going to continue the discussion of the game 31 from the previous post, so make sure you've read that post first! Just so we have them handy in this post, we'll go over the winning strategies for 31 once again: Ask yourself: “Can I rotate the die so as to get to a running total with

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-11259268633869772582011-06-30T11:30:00.000-07:002011-07-01T18:49:09.608-07:00

(NOTE: Check out the other posts in The Secrets of Nim series.) Did you think I had run out of versions of Nim yet? Today we look at Nim played with dice. In versions of Nim with dice, the dice aren't rolled. Instead, the number on a given player's turn is consciously chosen by that player. Also, a running total is kept, starting with the first number chosen by the first player, to which is

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-56247509885980172842011-06-26T08:00:00.000-07:002011-06-26T08:00:09.199-07:00

Get ready for Tau Day! Tau Day is not today. Tau Day is in two days, on Tuesday. Wait, what?!? If you've been to this site before, you should be well acquainted with Pi. Like Pi (π), Tau (τ) is a a mathematical constant. The value is simple enough, in that it's 2π (2 × Pi). Since Pi Day is 3/14, that makes Tau Day 6/28. So, why should we make such a big deal over Tau? That's the topic of

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-45503244205968221752011-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:002011-06-23T08:00:11.041-07:00

I've always tried to make learning fun, and I've found some kindred souls on YouTube who share the same passion. Check out their YouTube channels and, to quote Bill Cosby, if you're not careful, you just may learn something before it's done. singingbanana: James Grime's YouTube channel seems like a good place to start, especially considering how many times I've mentioned him here on Grey Matters

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-49671904070324737512011-06-19T12:30:00.000-07:002011-06-19T12:30:03.573-07:00

You've probably received the e-mail that says something like, “July 2011 will have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays all in one month. This happens only once in every 823 years.” A quick double-check of the calendar will verify that July 2011 does indeed have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. But is it really true that this happens only once in every 823 years? Since I teach calendar

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-40565143705755946972011-06-16T11:00:00.000-07:002011-06-16T11:01:20.137-07:00

Scam School is back, and this week, they're teach one of my all-time favorite mathematical tricks! This is one of those tricks that appears simple, and isn't hard to do, but the reason why it even works in the first place is almost as magical as the performance. Let's get right to the trick itself, shall we? This is a classic of mathemagic. I've mentioned it many times on this site, and

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-63927419906077965242011-06-12T12:30:00.000-07:002011-06-12T12:30:09.060-07:00

This month's snippets are all about online widgets, apps, and even toys that help you understand new concepts more effectively. • If you enjoyed my recent post on the Prisoner's Dilemma, there are a few places you can try out computer simulations online. Dave Reed's site features this simple Prisoner's Dilemma Simulation. A far more robust version can be found herem including historical results,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-39999323405350734162011-06-09T10:00:00.000-07:002011-10-19T19:50:21.814-07:00

Before I wind this series up and tie everything together, it's time to go back to the beginning. Not the beginning of this series, but to the beginning of our desire to understand the universe. When it came to explanations for our universe, the first one we had was the deity theory, as described in this post by Douglas Adams. From there, we gradually saw how math accurately reflected the real

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-30292852209269078412011-06-04T12:00:00.000-07:002011-06-05T12:00:19.713-07:00

Since we've talked about artificial life, biological life, and even behavior and decisions, you might start getting the idea that the impressive developments of iteration, feedback, and change require a living entity to work. If you take a closer look, you'll find not the case. All you need is an object and a process that will act on that object. To allow for iteration, you simply need time and

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-25013486075992585492011-06-02T09:00:00.000-07:002011-06-02T09:00:02.818-07:00

Now we've seen the amazing power of complexity arising from simplicity, and learned how it was primarily the study of evolution that made this power part of our mental toolbox. You've also seen the effect that Haeckel, Sumner, and Marx had when applying this to society at large. There's still the problem of cooperation. Why did early man, and even many animals, ever come around to cooperating in

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-20978592103110632452011-05-29T08:00:00.000-07:002011-10-19T19:33:43.371-07:00

In the previous post, I talked about artificial life and used it to demonstrate the amazing complexity that can develop from the simplest rules. That kind of complexity developing from simplicity is a concept so counter-intuitive that it wasn't been part of humanity's collective mental toolbox for most of recorded history. Since it's very difficult to conceive of this, even with a feedback

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-12401168504780798822011-05-25T11:30:00.000-07:002011-05-26T11:30:11.155-07:00

I'm going to take this blog in a rather unusual direction for the next few posts. I think you'll enjoy it. Many recent experiences have brought my focus to the same three titular concepts: iteration (repetition), feedback, and change. They've provoked my thoughts in an interesting way, and I hope to bring them to you in a way that will provoke your own thinking. These three concepts seem to

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-71675046831061957342011-05-22T11:30:00.000-07:002011-05-22T11:30:24.389-07:00

Back in March, Scam School taught a card memory feat in which you apparently memorize the order of a deck of cards so well, you can identify a single moved card. This past week, Scam School presented another card memory feat of a slightly different nature. I thought it might be fun to compare this simulated feat to the legitimate memory feat. We'll start with the simulated version. Imagine

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-25118872976566080552011-05-19T11:30:00.000-07:002011-05-19T11:30:14.790-07:00

Admittedly, learning the Day of the Week For Any Date feat in the classical way can be quite challenging. Not long ago, I designed the 2011 Dice Calendar iPad Cases, iPhone Cases, and iPod Touch Cases in order to simplify the feat with a hidden cheat sheet. Now, I've gone a step farther, and I'm releasing free backgrounds with a similar design for most Android and iOS devices! As with the

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-44364012655660261352011-05-12T10:30:00.000-07:002011-05-19T11:31:43.799-07:00

This week's Scam School features a classic mathematical trick I haven't thought about for a long time. I've mentioned “old” tricks before that date as far back as the 1920s or so, but this one can be found in a book that was first published in 1633! That's right, this trick is older than the United States of America. The best way to start off is to show you the trick. Try and think about how it

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-60418296519609719082011-05-08T12:15:00.000-07:002011-05-08T12:35:09.194-07:00

It's one thing to be able to do math well, whether on paper or in your head. It's often quite another thing to be able to keep the problem in context as you work through it. Today, Grey Matters features puzzles concerning the ability to keep your numbers in context. The answers will be posted at the end of Thursday's post. Until then, feel free to post your answers in the comments. • I'll start

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-32921789046458726752011-05-05T20:00:00.000-07:002011-05-05T20:00:06.997-07:00

Back in 2008, I discussed the amazing Fitch Cheney Card Trick, and mentioned it again when James Grime's Pi Day Magic App was released. As with all good Pi Day tricks, we need a Scam School episode to go with it! Without further ado, here's Brian Brushwood teaching the Fitch Cheney Card Trick: For convenience, you can download the free Pi Day Magic App here (iTunes Link), and use it to

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-14940059209152161822011-05-01T12:30:00.000-07:002011-05-01T12:37:25.088-07:00

Many of you watched the royal wedding at Buckingham Palace on Friday. Now that the wedding is over, the royal couple will be living in Wales while Prince William finishes his tour in the Royal Air Force. Their Welsh home provides several excellent opportunities to challenge and improve your memory! First, where is it? It's just off the western coast of England. Here in the US, most people only

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-2457632712354056212011-04-28T16:30:00.000-07:002011-04-28T16:30:42.231-07:00

A good puzzle has the counterintuitive quality of being very relaxing because of the thought you have to put into them. Here's a few good sites to lose yourself in some classic puzzles. • AMAZING Productions - Just started this month, this is a blog focused on mazes. Each post is a picture of a maze, and clicking on it will enlarge the picture. These are very high-quality original mazes, and

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-51226039436826532882011-04-24T11:30:00.000-07:002011-04-24T11:32:11.986-07:00

(Note: This is a repost, with some link updating and minor rewriting, from this same week 3 years ago. I repost it because it has become relevant again.) If you do math at all at the gas pump, it's probably either related to how many gallons you can get for a given amount of money, or how much money will be required to get a needed amount of gas. If you're willing to do a bit of math and

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-35257700293362384222011-04-21T16:30:00.000-07:002011-04-21T16:35:19.355-07:00

The sciences, especially math, are not often associated with fun. To combat that idea, I've gathered together links to many math and science documentaries online that challenge the notion that learning can't be fun. • Eureka! - No, I'm not referring to the SyFy drama. Eureka! is a series of 5-minute animated shorts, each of which focused on an aspect of basic physics, such as intertia or mass.

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-47779796002841680872011-04-17T12:30:00.000-07:002011-04-17T12:30:10.162-07:00

April's editions of snippets is dedicated to math and videos, so let's get started right away! • Many people originally knew Danica McKellar as Winnie from The Wonder Years, and now know her as the author of several books designed to make math less intimidating for girls. Ever wonder how that change came about? In her brand new blog, she answers that question in her Why Math? post. Between that,

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-51937539224193014182011-04-14T10:30:00.000-07:002011-04-14T10:32:05.596-07:00

(NOTE: Check out the other posts in The Secrets of Nim series.) Do you read Grey Matters regularly? If so, you'll have a great advantage in figuring out Star Nim. Even if not, you can have some fun playing and figuring out the game right in this post! First, let's get the rules of Star Nim down. It's a standard Nim game. As defined in the first Nim post, that simply means that the last person

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-89430673925759314892011-04-10T11:30:00.000-07:002011-04-10T11:37:12.255-07:00

April 10th is both the anniversary of Henry Ernest Dudeney's birth, as well as the anniversary of Sam Loyd's death. Henry Ernest Dudeney was to puzzles in England what Sam Loyd was to puzzles in America. In honor of those anniversaries, I'd like to take a close look at a particular puzzle from Henry Dudeney's second book, Amusements in Mathematics (available online at Project Gutenberg for free)

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-35901199978729007032011-04-07T10:30:00.000-07:002011-04-07T10:30:07.765-07:00

Since I redesigned the site, I've been working on redesigning the store. Finally, the new Grey Matters store is now open! I've designed to bring products of interest to Grey Matters reader from multiple stores together in one place, to make it more convenient. The store is designed in the same style as the rest of the Grey Matters site, with product descriptions in individual posts. The heart

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-81499648959767043872011-04-03T11:00:00.000-07:002011-04-07T02:02:21.569-07:00

Now that I've helped make radian and degree conversion easier in my previous post, it's time to tackle the even more fearful part of the unit circle, the sine and cosine aspect! Instead of working out sine and cosine in your head, though, you're going to have to work them out on your fingers. On the last page of my unit circle tutorial, I include the following video, which teaches the basic

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-64375145360558004362011-03-31T11:30:00.000-07:002011-03-31T11:30:01.291-07:00

This post and the next are about handy mnemonics for trigonometry. For both of them, I'm going to assume you're familiar with the unit circle and Pi. We'll start off with Vi Hart's rant about Pi being wrong. This is a conviction shared by Michael Hartl and Bob Palais, among others: If the part about Euler's identity confuses you, check out BetterExplained.com's Intuitive Understanding Of

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-23016931259820074612011-03-27T11:30:00.000-07:002011-03-27T20:29:56.643-07:00

It's been a long time since the release of both Impuzzibilities and Further Impuzzibilities, but author Jim Steinmeyer has finally released the latest in the series, Subsequent Impuzzibilities. Is it a worthy successor to the previous two books? That's the topic of today's post. If you're not already familiar with the first books in the Impuzzibilities series, either go buy them now, or at least

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-38313418140250264722011-03-24T10:00:00.000-07:002011-03-24T10:00:06.160-07:00

Back in the Grey Matters' 6th Blogiversary post, I mentioned that James Grime had something up his sleeve for this year's Pi Day, as well. He slightly missed the deadline, but has delivered nonetheless. Let's start with James Grime's own rather unusual description of this year's Pi Day trick. He starts the video with an apology for the delay, and then goes on to explain the trick with puppets (

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-14337447397308585182011-03-20T12:15:00.000-07:002011-03-20T12:15:33.763-07:00

As much as I teach real memory feats, I'm not above the occasional fake demonstration. Many of them, like the one taught on Scam School in the video below, are quite ingenious in their methods. If you don't believe me, just check out the 15 pages under Simulated Memory Demonstrations in my Memory Effects list. I've run across several fake memory demonstrations that were less than convincing, so

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-5871430153945591592011-03-17T16:00:00.000-07:002011-03-17T16:01:38.595-07:00

So, how do I kick off my 7th year of blogging at Grey Matters? By creating a mobile version of this site! If you're visiting Grey Matters on a mobile phone, you've already noticed the difference. If the site detects your mobile device, it will automatically redirect to the mobile blog for an easier reading experience. Yes, there has been a Mobile button at the top of this page since the new

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-54225443523730703902011-03-14T09:05:00.000-07:002011-03-17T14:12:47.244-07:00

Can you believe it? Today, Grey Matters is 6 years old! It's expanded, grown, and changed beyond even what I expected when I started it! It's also Pi Day (3/14) and Albert Einstein's birthday, so let's celebrate in a geeky manner! The best way to start? Check out all the Pi entries here on the blog, in the Mental Gym, and in the Video section. If you haven't guessed already, it's no coincidence

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-36952025211482868162011-03-10T11:00:00.000-08:002011-03-10T11:00:00.413-08:00

It seems the promise of spring is making everyone more productive. Let's see what's going on in this edition of snippets. Just a quick note before we begin – Instead of my usual Sunday post, my next post will be on Monday. Why? It's March 14th or 3/14. That means it's Pi Day, Albert Einstein's birthday, and Grey Matters' 6th blogiversary! • If you enjoy MAGIC Magazine, but wish their database

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-6445652775407146742011-03-06T09:45:00.000-08:002011-03-06T09:54:18.185-08:00

Granted, my list of sites to learn the basics of memory technique is handy, but the pages are mostly text and illustrations. I decided it was time to add video instruction for memory techniques! I've spent the past few days digging through YouTube videos relating to the various memory techniques, and grouping them into playlists. I tried to order them from simpler descriptions to more complete

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-90656484132153597272011-03-03T13:30:00.000-08:002011-06-19T15:20:35.803-07:00

I originally posted the Day of the Week For Any Date tutorial back in 1998. Over the years, I've learned a few tips and tricks to improve both the method itself and the teaching. As a result, I decided to develop a completely new and revised Day of the Week For Any Date tutorial! What's new about it? The first major change I made was to eliminate the requirement of having to study and practice

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-45149170876752920482011-02-27T11:00:00.000-08:002011-02-27T11:02:08.206-08:00

In any demonstration where you show the powers of the mind, it's all too easy to appear as a show-off, and create animosity in your audience. How do you engage your audience, instead of having them resent you as being a know-it-all? One of the most common ways is used, appropriately, when the memory demonstration is being used to promote a course or other memory product. It's the simple attitude

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-16446592942816847262011-02-24T11:45:00.000-08:002011-02-24T11:45:47.633-08:00

Want to improve your mental math skills? In this post, we've got a host of videos that will show you how to figure problems in your quickly and easily! • Total Breeze – These are some of the most nicely-produced mental math instruction videos of the group. There are 12 videos posted for free. Most cover specific aspects of mental math, but the intro video gives a great mix: • Mental Math

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-82897889932788100702011-02-20T11:00:00.000-08:002011-02-20T11:00:51.015-08:00

I've posted a new tutorial over at the Mental Gym. It's designed to help you better understand and remember one of the most feared structures in mathematics: The Unit Circle! Because the unit circle combines pi, degrees, radians, circles, triangles, sines, cosines, and cartesian coordinates, it can often seem intimidating and confusing. I'd tried to break it down clearly and simply, and build it

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-40239055876093697352011-02-17T12:00:00.000-08:002011-02-17T12:00:09.107-08:00

Today's snippets deal with updates galore! • If you enjoyed Chocolate Nim, Presh Talwalkar over at the Mind Your Decisions blog, has posted a chocolate-themed math puzzle that's also fun to chew over. Ben Vitale has more on the related game of Chomp, which I mentioned at the end of that article. For more Nim fun, check out the new Nim category I added! • Thanks to the mention of Grey Matters on

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-57335320142045434712011-02-13T17:30:00.000-08:002011-02-13T17:30:15.011-08:00

(NOTE: Check out the other posts in The Secrets of Nim series.) In this post, you'll learn the sweetest and most tempting version of Nim ever: Chocolate Nim! If you've ever eaten a Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar by breaking it along the lines, you've been practicing for this. RulesBefore we dive into the strategy for Chocolate Nim, we need to establish the rules of play. If you've played Nim

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11439944.post-14525471370635014392011-02-09T22:00:00.000-08:002011-02-10T12:44:38.522-08:00

If you came here after watching this week's Scam School episode, I'll answer your first question right now: here's the Gilbreath Principle article Brian Brushwood recommended. Thanks for the plug, Brian! Also, thanks to Mismag822 for suggesting this scam. Let's jump right into this week's episode, and see exactly what this Gilbreath Principle can do for scammers: On one hand, I'm glad to see

Pi Guyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09760001560356969164noreply@blogger.com0