Math Trivia for PME Event

3D-Shapes

1

What shape is composed of 6 faces, all of which are parallelograms (but not necessarily squares, rectangles, or rhombuses)?

Parallelepiped 

2

What is a Platonic solid with 20 faces called?

Icosahedron

3

What shape has area 1/3(B)(h), where B is the area of the base and h is the height?

Pyramid 

4

How many vertices does a regular dodecahedron have?

20

5

What type of ellipsoid is the Earth's shape considered to be most similar to?

Oblate Spheroid

Mathematicians

1

What 17th century mathematician is considered to be the co-inventor of calculus, along with Sir Isaac Newton?

Gottfried Liebniz

2

What 2001 film follows the life of schizophrenic mathematician John Nash?

A Beautiful Mind

3

Which Fields Medalist and child prodigy is the youngest person to ever win gold in the International Math Olympiad?

Terrence Tao

4

What pioneer of group theory was killed in a duel at age 20?

Evariste Galois

5

19th Century mathematician Ada Lovelace, credited for creating the concept of a computer program, was the daughter of what famous poet?

Lord Byron

Curves in Real Life

1

What curve does the trajectory of a diagonally thrown ball follow on Earth's surface?

Parabola

2

The fractal known as the Koch Curve approximates the shape of what natural fractals? 

Snowflakes

3

A rainbow version of which curve is often used to represent the Autism Rights Movement?

Lemniscate

4

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri is which type of curve?

Catenary

5

Approximating Earth as a sphere, longitude lines are half of what type of circle?

Great Circle

Theorems

1

What theorem should be used to most easily expand the following:

(x+27)^6

Binomial Theorem

2

Which theorem is the following statement:

"If f is continuous on a closed interval [a,b], and c is any number between f(a) and f(b) inclusive, then there is at least one number x in the closed interval such that f(x) = c"

(source: Wolfram)

Intermediate Value Theorem

3

e^(iπ) = ?

-1

4

What theorem guarantees that 

x^6 + 5x^5 + x + 9 

has 6 roots (real or complex, counting roots with multiplicity n n times) due to being a 6th degree polynomial?

The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra

5

Which theorem with applications in mapmaking is widely considered the first major mathematical result to be proven with computers?

The Four Color Theorem

Mathematical Symbols

1

Provide notation which represents the compliment of a set A (there are multiple correct answers)

A^c, A', Ā, or ~A 

2

In mathematics, what does an upside down A generally stand for?

For All

3

What is the following division symbol officially called?

÷

Obelus

4

What does the mathematical shorthand ∵ mean?

Because

5

The abbreviation "QED" is often placed at the end of mathematical proofs to indicate their completion. What do the letters in the abbreviation QED stand for?

Quod Erat Demonstrandum (Translation: "What Was to be Shown")