[math-fun] Martin Gardner testimonials
Who wants to post the lucky hundredth testimonial to Martin? It would be great if we could get the total up to 101 (or beyond) in time for the 101st anniversary of Martin's birth (tomorrow). Jim Propp
On 2015-10-21 06:16, James Propp wrote:
Who wants to post the lucky hundredth testimonial to Martin?
It would be great if we could get the total up to 101 (or beyond) in time for the 101st anniversary of Martin's birth (tomorrow).
Jim Propp
http://martin-gardner.org/Testimonials.html has already reached 101, so I'll just repeat here two that I've contributed to Gathering publications. I once counted his citations for exemplary usage in the electronic edition of Merriam Webster's Unabridged (which I no longer have). It was in the dozens, near the highest. (Along with a Mr and Mrs(?), improbably named Beaglehole). In his column Martin speculated that the limiting shape of the the tetrahedral analog of Koch's Snowflake construction would be "smooth as a marble". It turns out to be a perfect cube, hence the name of the interlocking sheet: http://gosper.org/martinsmarbles.png --rwg
Does anyone happen to know (or have a way to easily determine) the average length of a Martin Gardner column, as measured by word-count? Jim Propp On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 1:43 PM, rwg <rwg@sdf.org> wrote:
On 2015-10-21 06:16, James Propp wrote:
Who wants to post the lucky hundredth testimonial to Martin?
It would be great if we could get the total up to 101 (or beyond) in time for the 101st anniversary of Martin's birth (tomorrow).
Jim Propp
http://martin-gardner.org/Testimonials.html has already reached 101, so I'll just repeat here two that I've contributed to Gathering publications.
I once counted his citations for exemplary usage in the electronic edition of Merriam Webster's Unabridged (which I no longer have). It was in the dozens, near the highest. (Along with a Mr and Mrs(?), improbably named Beaglehole).
In his column Martin speculated that the limiting shape of the the tetrahedral analog of Koch's Snowflake construction would be "smooth as a marble". It turns out to be a perfect cube, hence the name of the interlocking sheet: http://gosper.org/martinsmarbles.png --rwg
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The MAA sells a CD of his collected columns, organized by (and as they appeared in) books. Maybe it's easy to figure its (total bytes) / (# columns) ? —Dan
On Oct 21, 2015, at 1:41 PM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
Does anyone happen to know (or have a way to easily determine) the average length of a Martin Gardner column, as measured by word-count?
Jim Propp
On Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 1:43 PM, rwg <rwg@sdf.org> wrote:
On 2015-10-21 06:16, James Propp wrote:
Who wants to post the lucky hundredth testimonial to Martin?
It would be great if we could get the total up to 101 (or beyond) in time for the 101st anniversary of Martin's birth (tomorrow). http://martin-gardner.org/Testimonials.html
has already reached 101, so I'll just repeat here two that I've contributed to Gathering publications.
I once counted his citations for exemplary usage in the electronic edition of Merriam Webster's Unabridged (which I no longer have). It was in the dozens, near the highest. (Along with a Mr and Mrs(?), improbably named Beaglehole).
In his column Martin speculated that the limiting shape of the the tetrahedral analog of Koch's Snowflake construction would be "smooth as a marble". It turns out to be a perfect cube, hence the name of the interlocking sheet: http://gosper.org/martinsmarbles.png --rwg
On Wed, 21 Oct 2015, James Propp wrote:
Does anyone happen to know (or have a way to easily determine) the average length of a Martin Gardner column, as measured by word-count?
I have a copy of the CDROM version of the columns right here. I used pdftotext to convert them to text and wc -w to count the words. The total was 1201144 words. I'm not sure how many columns this covers, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Martin_Gardner_Mathematical_Games_colu... says he wrote 297, but I don't think that includes the Flexagon article, which is on the CDROM. In any case, 1201144/298 is 4030.7, roughly. This is definitely an overestimate, because it includes the front matter for the 15 files that the CDROM gathers the columns into, and pdftotext breaks some words into multiple pieces. For example, here's how it renders a sentence from the first file: The resulting folded strip, illustrated by the second drawing in the series, is then folded back on the lines a b and cd [third drazoing], forming the hexagon [ f o u r t h d r a w i n g ]; finally the blank triangle is turned under and pasted to the corresponding blank triangle on the other side of the strip. All that said, 4000 words (about 8 pages of standard typing) is probably a good guess. -- Tom Duff. Password cannot contain continuums bit!
On Thu, 22 Oct 2015, Tom Duff wrote:
For example, here's how it renders a sentence from the first file:
The resulting folded strip, illustrated by the second drawing in the series, is then folded back on the lines a b and cd [third drazoing], forming the hexagon [ f o u r t h d r a w i n g ]; finally the blank triangle is turned under and pasted to the corresponding blank triangle on the other side of the strip.
I forgot to mention the point of quoting this sentence: wc -w says it's 64 words, but 47 is more like it. This was a particularly egregious case, with "[ f o u r t h d r a w i n g ]" contributing 15 spurious words. -- Tom Duff. There is no killer app. It's just Windows.
I believe the CD-ROM also included an interview which should not be part of the word count. Yes, the Flexagon article makes 298, but the October 1975 article never made it to book. Furthermore, Gardner appears to have created some 14 new chapters for the books, most likely new material but the possibility exists that some were column rearrangements.
On Oct 22, 2015, at 12:35 PM, Tom Duff <td@pixar.com> wrote:
... he wrote 297, but I don't think that includes the Flexagon article, which is on the CDROM. In any case, 1201144/298 is 4030.7, roughly.
participants (5)
-
Dan Asimov -
Hans Havermann -
James Propp -
rwg -
Tom Duff