Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Zingo

 The bar was set pretty high with the kids' game Spot It and several analyses followed:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTDKqW_GLkw
    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/math-card-game-spot-it-180970873/
    https://mathcircles.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/SpotItPuzzleEdited.pdf
On the other hand, there's Zingo. Three copies of each tile exist, and gameplay proceeds like Bingo except only one player can claim a called tile. 

The game has six green cards and six red cards; the green cards are advertised as having fewer shapes in common. However, the pair on the right shares five of nine, more than nearly all pairs of red cards! Meanwhile, the left pair shares only two. The player with the left card has a definite advantage. 

This game would benefit from better cards.

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Political Parties and Sports




Of the last 30 Super Bowl winners, 18 had Republican Governors, and 18 had Democrat Presidents.

States with NFL teams don't have significantly more Democrat governors.

See also, Election 2020: Inside the political donation history of wealthy sports owners.

Friday, September 8, 2023

Top Big Band Albums

Composer and bandleader Darcy James Argue announced 30 + 30 Essential Bigband Recordings. Half of them predate the Grammy for large group, but still I expected more in the union of these sets. 





My Euler diagram is obviously loose. You can find Miles, Miles + Gil, Miles + Quincy, and Quincy separated, as well as ghost bands separated from their originals, but otherwise I didn't fret too much over different recordings or eras representing the group. 

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Highly Composite Numbers

 A highly composite number is a positive integer with more divisors than any smaller positive integer has. Here's my visual representation, a rare example where I feel I can justify using a log-log scale. Graphed is A000005 in black with the highly composite numbers A002182 in red.