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Mathemathics Tarot PDF
Mathemathics Tarot PDF
MATHEMATICS
TAROT
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An Anchorite Studios Production
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Kyle for being a precogniscant bastard and telling me
that I'd fall in love with math...eventually. The odds were against you, mate,
but you were right in the end.
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Contents
Page 5: Contents
Page 9: Introduction
Page 15: Majors
Page 43: Minors
Page 45: Cups
Page 55: Coins
Page 65: Wands
Page 75: Swords
Page 85: Courts
Page 103: Spreads
Page 107: Games and Tricks
Page 111: Further Reading
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Forward to the
Second edition
This project has provided me with a lot of opportunities to say, “I never thought
I'd find myself doing that!” Case in point: I never thought I'd find myself writing
a forward to a second edition of the Mathematics Tarot, let alone the first edition,
let alone creating it at all. I still harbour a nagging suspicion that I awoke in
Bizarro Universe at some point in 2012, and have yet to return to my own, rather
more mundane dimension.
The reception for the Mathematics Tarot has utterly blown me away. I
produced the limited first edition fully expecting it to be a humpbacked, red-
headed stepchild of a deck, lagging behind my other offerings in sales and
reviews. The reality, to my surprise and delight, has been quite the opposite.
Whether you are familiar with the Mathematics Tarot, or have just discovered
it, I wish you many years of happy reading!
Karen West
March 2013
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INTRODUCTION
to the first edition
It is the last day of the semester, and I am fifteen years old.
She takes me to her office, gives me a cup of tea and some tissues, and says,
"Now, I'm really not supposed to do this, but we'll make an exception in this case,
so that you don't give yourself a heart attack with all this worry." She proceeds to
check the exam results on her computer.
"I hate math," my fifteen year old self hisses in that office, with all the impotent
passion of a child, echoing the sentiments of a thousand others.
After that summer, I dropped out of public schooling for medical reasons, and
spent the next five years trying to complete my education through distance
education programs with varying levels of success. It wasn't until I was twenty-
one that I finally came close to graduation, with only one barrier standing between
me and my future.
A math course.
This time, I was mature enough to realize that there was only one way through
this: if I could make myself like math, if I could find some redeeming quality or
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interesting fact about it, then I could convince myself to finish that damnable
course and get on with my life. I embarked upon a mission to the internet, where I
found documentaries: first on particle physics (which was interesting enough) and
then later, on mathematics.
I felt like someone had hit me upside the head with a brick and involved me in
a vast, absurd conspiracy, intended to convince the world that math was useless
and frustrating and uninteresting—when in reality, math is none of those things.
The history of mathematics is full of enough weirdness, murder, intrigue, and
triumph to inspire ten seasons of soap operas and docu-dramas. It was staffed with
magnificently flawed geniuses who worshipped numbers, or duelled with pistols;
men who turned down million-dollar prizes and the women who programmed the
first computers; palaces built as love letters to symmetry and mysteries that would
remain forever unsolved. Even the rough beast of practical mathematics was itself
deep and sanguine and fascinating, if you knew where to look, and knew why the
numbers did what they did.
When I had taken mathematics in school, many students, including myself, had
asked the perennial question: what good was all this rubbish? What was it for?
What good would it do us? And the answer, of course, was put forth to us again
and again, by different teachers over the years: "Well, you won't use any of this
unless you become a rocket scientist, but you have to learn it anyway." Generation
upon generation of students, taught that the class they're taking has no purpose
beyond receiving an arbitrary slip of paper at the end of the year. Only one teacher
I studied under ever attempted to make mathematics fun, or taught us any of the
vibrant history, or explained the whys behind the theory. I blame the system and
not the teachers for this—with often thankless jobs, overlarge classes and
unwieldy schedules, it's a miracle that insanity isn't more prevalent in academia.
Needless to say, if you're a teacher, you're a hero and a gentleperson, and never
forget it.
As I worked my way through that final math course, shocking myself with an A
grade after a lifetime of C-'s and near-failures, I tried to cure the people around me
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of their hatred for mathematics. I focused more on the women in my life, since the
girls in my classes had been especially picked out as superfluous—girls don't
become mathematicians, of course! I shared my new-found love of mathematics
with my foster sister, who was rapidly working her way through calculus and
physics courses of her own, aiming for a position as a naval engineer in the
Canadian Forces. We spent many evenings with mixed drinks and mixed
company, exasperating our friends by swapping obscure mathematics jokes back
and forth for hours, and excitedly talking over each other about the most recent
book we'd read on prime numbers.
And then one fateful day, after a tiny, ridiculous light-bulb flashed on above my
head, I sent my sister a text message which read: "I'm thinking of making a
mathematics tarot deck. SAVE ME FROM MYSELF."
It's an incredibly surreal experience for me, to be honest. A few years ago, if
you'd suggested that I would so much as appreciate math, let alone love it and
receive top grades in advanced classes, I would probably have called the
sanatorium. And if you'd told me I would be publishing a math-themed tarot deck,
I would have fainted in a pile of petticoats. As I write this, the deck has not yet
been released for sale, but the online response to the concept and images has
blown me away. A huge thank-you goes to everyone who has liked or commented
upon my silly work-in-progress posts about the deck. You all helped keep me
sustained and inspired throughout the whole crazy process, and allayed my fears
about creating this deck, despite being an amateur enthusiast instead of an
authoritative expert.
Happy reading!
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The Cards
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The Majors
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The Fool
Lorenz System
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The Magician
Uncertainty Principle
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The Popess
Sine Wave
The Math: Also called a sinusoid, the sine wave is much simpler
than the complex waveforms produced by musical instruments, and
illustrates a smooth, repetitive oscillation. All waves can be built by
sine waves, and are behind many mathematical and physical
phenomena: sound, light, radio, aquatic, seismic. Sine waves, in a
term, are natural sway.
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sine_wave_amplitude_wavelengt
h.svg
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The Empress
Potential Energy
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The Emperor
Mass-Energy Equivalence
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The Hierophant
Pythagorean Theorem
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pitagorasteorema.svg
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The Lovers
The Mandelbrot Set
The Math: Loved outside of mathematics for its visual appeal, this
set is a dynamical system in which the output of a function is fed back
into the equation as its input, resulting in an infinitely detailed
boundary with a central void. If you zoom into any area of the set,
you will find the same shapes repeated in new and more complex
arrangements the deeper you go.
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The Chariot
Inflation
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horizonte_inflacionario.svg
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Justice
Entanglement
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The Hermit
Minkowski Spacetime
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The Wheel of Fortune
Pi
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Strength
Curie's Law
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The Hanged Man
The Higgs Boson
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Death
Binary
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Temperance
Euler's Formula
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Euler%27s_formula%28vi
%29.svg
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The Devil
Maxwell's Demon
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The Tower
Fermat Conjecture
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The Star
The Riemann Hypothesis
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The Moon
Divide By Zero
The Math: Anyone who has taken high school or college algebra
knows what happens when you accidentally (or intentionally) divide
by zero on your calculator: you get an error message. In mathematics,
dividing by zero can range from mildly frustrating, in the case of a
small algebraic error, to catastrophic, in the case of the USS Yorktown
incident, in which a database field error caused the ship's propulsion
system to fail. Dividing by zero has become a meme in popular
culture on the internet, and is often used to humorous effect on
photographs of sinkholes and bell-mouth spillways. Dividing by zero
can also produce the 2=1 fallacy, given some simple algebraic
tweaking.
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyperbola_one_over_x.svg
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The Sun
The Golden mean
The Math: Famous in both mathematics and art, the golden mean,
or golden ratio, states that two quantities are in the golden mean if the
ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the
ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one—or, in simpler terms,
a+b is to a as a is to b. The diagram is of the Fibonacci spiral, a related
piece of maths; if you take a Fibonacci number and divide it by the
previous Fibonacci number, you get closer and closer to the golden
mean. The Fibonacci sequence and the golden mean appear
everywhere in maths, art, architecture, nature, music, finances, and
design.
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Judgment
Isometries
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The World
Theory of Everything
The Math: While the theory itself is simply an umbrella term for
various theories that attempt to unite disparate areas of physics, the
concept has high aims. Currently, although both work perfectly well
while separate, the theory of general relativity and the theory of
quantum mechanics don't quite mesh, and the sticky issue is gravity.
Many theories have been put forward, some more promising than
others, but so far none have come close to answering the penultimate
question of science: is there a theory that links the entirety of physical
phenomena? Can science ever explain the whole universe?
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The Empty Set
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Möbius
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moebius_strip.svg
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The Mathematician
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The Minors
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Ace of Cups
Strong Interaction
The Math: Also called the strong nuclear force, this fundamental
interaction is much stronger than electromagnetism at an atomic level.
Carried by gluons, it binds protons and neutrons together to form the
nucleus of an atom, and at a lower level, binds quarks together to
form protons, neutrons, and hadrons.
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pn_scatter_pi0.png
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Two of Cups
Euler-Euclid Theorem
The Math: Mersenne numbers are any positive integer that is one
less than a power of two. Mersenne primes, by extrapolation, are
Mersenne numbers that are prime, of which there are currently only
47 known. A perfect number is any positive integer that is equal to
the sum of its factors (for instance, 6 is a perfect number, as you can
add 1+2+3 to reach it). The connection between Mersenne primes and
perfect numbers is mysterious and fascinating: if M is a Mersenne
Prime, [M(M+1)] ÷ 2 will be an even perfect number every time.
Discoveries of new Mersenne primes immediately result in new
perfect numbers.
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Three of Cups
Sierpinski Triangle
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Four of Cups
The Center of a Triangle
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Five of Cups
Continuum Hypothesis
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ContinuumHypothesis.svg
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Six of Cups
Newton's Second Law
The Math: While the First Law simply states that force is required
to accelerate an object, the Second Law answers the question about
how much force is required. The necessary force is directly
proportional to the object's mass; the larger the mass, the more force is
required.
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Seven of Cups
Principle of Explosion
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Eight of Cups
Unstable Equilibrium
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Nine of Cups
Mean Value Theorem
The Math: Simply put, given an arc between two endpoints, there
is at least one point at which the tangent to the arc is parallel to the
secant through its endpoints. In other words, at some point the slope
of a curve must equal its average slope. You can imagine this using
the analogy of a car travelling down a highway: if its average speed
throughout the trip was 100km/h, at some point the car must have
been travelling at exactly 100km/h, even if the rest of the trip was
taken at slower or faster speeds. Though it seems simple enough, this
theorem had widespread and mind-shattering consequences
throughout mathematics, especially in the realm of real numbers and
continuous functions, as well as being essential to proving the
fundamental theorem of calculus.
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mvt2.svg
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Ten of Cups
Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic
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Ace of Coins
Gravity
Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NewtonsLawOfUniversalGravitatio
n.svg
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Two of Coins
Hailstone numbers
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Three of Coins
Perfect Magic Cubes
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Four of Coins
Perelman's Theorem
The Math: Also called the Poincare Conjecture after its originator,
it remained a conjecture for nearly a century, and made the list of
seven Millennium Problems. While unsolved, it was arguably the
most important question in topology, the study of continuous
deformations of objects without tearing them (source of the old joke
about how topologists are mathematicians who don't know the
difference between a donut and a coffee cup). In topology, if you can
make a loop on an object and tighten it to a point continuously, then
the object is considered a sphere, which is the only simply connected
surface known in topology. The conjecture asked whether the same
was true if you went up a dimension to three-dimensional spheres.
Between 2002 and 2003, Grigori Perelman solved the conjecture,
proving that the same is indeed true for 3-spheres, but famously
turned down both the $1,000,000 prize and the Fields Medal.
Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:P1S2all.jpg
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Five of Coins
Ultrafinitism
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Six of Coins
Perfect Numbers
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Seven of Coins
Hilbert's 4th Problem
The Math: This problem is simply the search for new non-
Euclidean geometries (or geometries that stand outside of the non-
Euclidean area of geometry) through geodesics, which is the study of
which sort of lines are the shortest distance between two points. The
answer isn't always as easy as it sounds—try making a straight line on
a torus. While something of a solution to the general concept was
given by Georg Hamel, the original statement has been considered too
vague to answer fully.
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Eight of Coins
The frivolous theorem of arithmetic
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Nine of Coins
1 – 2 + 3 – 4 + . . .
Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pm1234_Ground.png
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Ten of Coins
Sporadic Groups
Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Finitesubgroups.svg
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Ace of Wands
Electromagnetism
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Feynmann_Diagram_Coulo
mb.svg
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Two of Wands
Venn Diagram
The Math: Named after the man who invented them in the late
1800's, Venn diagrams are used to show the relations between two
sets. They aren't relegated to the realm of mathematics, but are
heavily used in linguistics and other social sciences. Although the
most common Venn diagram has two spheres that overlap in the
centre, Venn diagrams can easily compare five or more sets, given a
complex arrangement of shapes invented by Venn and Edwards.
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Three of Wands
Tupper's Self-Referential theorem
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Four of Wands
adding up 1 to 100
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Five of Wands
Leibniz-Newton Calculus Controversy
The Math: Begun in the late 1600's and only moderately wound up
by the time Leibniz died in near anonymity in 1716 (his grave
remained unmarked for fifty years), the Controversy began when
these two scientific giants apparently independently discovered
calculus. Debate raged fiercely for years over who had been first, and
whether Leibniz had simply come up with a different method of
notation, while Newton invented the core idea. In an age without
digital records and timestamps, the only evidence was the word of
each man. At first, it appeared as though the matter would end
peacefully, but an anonymous tract suggesting that Newton had
stolen Leibniz’s ideas created an inferno. While neither man wished
for fame, both wished to retain their dignity and integrity before the
scientific world, and were unable to back down without losing their
standing. Today, it is generally accepted that each invented the
calculus independently.
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Six of Wands
Schrödinger equation
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Seven of Wands
Newton's Third Law
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BookNormal.svg
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Eight of Wands
Speed of Light
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Nine of Wands
Octonion
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FanoMnemonic.PNG
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Ten of Wands
Black hole
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Ace of Swords
Weak Nuclear force
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Two of Swords
Strange equality
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Three of Swords
Schrödinger's cat
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Four of Swords
Trachtenberg arithmetic
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Five of Swords
Seven Bridges of königsberg
The Math: Look at the image on the card. Now imagine that each
of those white arches are bridges in a city, and you have been charged
with the task of moving through the city while only crossing each
bridge once. You can't go over a bridge twice, or backtrack, or fly. Can
you do it? The answer—although I don't blame you if you try a few
times regardless—is no. It is a fundamentally unsolvable problem.
(Unless, of course, you take the advice of my fey young cousin who,
upon being faced with this problem, said with absolute dignity and
assurance, "Just build another stupid bridge.")
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:7_bridges.svg
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Six of Swords
Mersenne Primes
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Seven of Swords
String theory
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Eight of Swords
zeno's paradox
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Nine of Swords
Millennium Prize problems
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Ten of Swords
Uncountable sets
The Math: The natural numbers are all the practical ones we use in
daily life: 0, 1, 2, and so forth on to infinity. The real numbers, on the
other hand, comprise every single decimal expansion and whole
number, on to infinity. While the natural numbers are all whole, the
real numbers contain all the numbers in between the natural numbers,
as well as the natural numbers themselves. Remember the frivolous
theorem of arithmetic, which states that most natural numbers are
very, very large? Well, the real numbers are beyond the scale of
human comprehension—so large an infinity dwells innocently
between 0 and 1 that it dwarfs the natural numbers into absurdity.
Don't think about it too hard, or your brain might melt.
Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Latex_real_numbers.svg
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The Courts
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Princess of Cups
Zero Simplex
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Prince of Cups
One Simplex
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Queen of Cups
Two Simplex
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King of Cups
Three Simplex
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Princess of Coins
Circle
The Math: Euclid's definition of the circle, which has survived the
intervening years of poetic mathematicians, is that a circle will appear
when you mark a spot on the ground and ask ten people to stand
around it at a distance of one metre. We've all dealt with circular
math in our younger years of schooling: the circumference, the
diameter, the arc, the radius, the chord, and of course, the ubiquitous
pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.
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Prince of Coins
Square
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Queen of Coins
Polygon
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King of Coins
polyhedron
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Princess of Wands
addition
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Prince of Wands
Subtraction
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Queen of Wands
Multiplication
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King of Wands
Division
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Princess of Swords
integers
The Math: The integers are all the natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, etc)
combined with their cousins once removed, the negative numbers, or
everything below zero. They are a subset of real numbers, and are the
numerical basis of all the mathematics you've ever done. There are no
fractions or square roots within their ranks; they are fundamentally
simple.
Image Source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Integers-line.svg
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Prince of Swords
imaginary numbers
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Queen of Swords
rational numbers
The Math: These are, simply put, the fractions—or, as she would
be called if I renamed her, the Queen of Quotients. All integers are
children of fractions, since they can be written as, for example, 2/1, or
two over one. Of course, because you cannot divide by zero, the
bottom number (or denominator) of a rational number can never be
zero.
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King of Swords
complex numbers
Image Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Complex_number_illustration.svg
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Spreads
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Dimensions spread:
One Dimension - where you start
Two Dimensions - where you go from here
Three Dimensions - what you will do when you get there
Isometries spread:
Rotation – what surrounds you
Translation – where you are going
Reflection – how you see yourself
Glide – how to move forward
Entanglement spread:
Draw two cards. You may only look at one of them; when you are finished, replace both
cards into the deck.
Position – where you are now
Momentum – where you are going
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T.O.E. Spread:
General Relativity – the established situation
Quantum Mechanics – the new element, the mystery, the challenge
Final Theory – how to bridge the gap or solve the problem
b) Person A
Person B
How they get along/are similar
c) Desire A
Desire B
How to compromise
d) Situation/project
Querent
Their interaction
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Games & Tricks
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Nim:
Invented in the seventeenth century, Nim is a great game to play
when you're bored on the beach with a friend. Find yourself a pile of
stones, counters, M&M's, or any other collection of small objects
(between 15 and 40 is good). Each player takes a turn to remove
either one, two, or three counters from the pile. The person to take the
last counter wins.
Magic Squares:
If you're tired of Sudoku and need a new challenge, try to come up
with as many 4x4 magic squares as you can – there are over eight
hundred in total. Each row and column must add up to the same
number, as well as the diagonals. If even that fails to challenge you,
try 5x5's – there are over two hundred million of those.
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The 11 Trick:
We all know how to multiply something by ten; you just add a zero to
the end. But how about multiplying by eleven? Surprisingly, it's
almost as easy. Say you want to multiply 52 by 11. Take the 5 and the
2 and add them together to get 7. Then sandwich it between the 5 and
the 2 like so: 572. And there you have your answer! If the number
you add ends up being a two digit number, it's slightly different; say
you want to multiply 85 and 11. 8 + 5 is 13. Put the 3 in the middle to
get 835, then add the 1 to the 8 to get 935, which is your answer.
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Further Reading
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Further Reading:
Company, 2000).
Schuster, 2006).
(HarperCollins, 2008).
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• Peterson, Ivars. The Mathematical Tourist (W.H. Freeman and
Company, 1988).
• Pickover, Clifford A. The Physics Book: From the Big Bang to Quantum
(HarperCollins 1993).
• Carroll, Sean. From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory
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