About

Exponent Zero is, in all seriousness, a math/puzzle blog. The aim of this blog is to rebel against the stereotypical “Oh, math is sooo boringgg…” mindset that many people seem to develop.

The truth is that math is simple, and beautiful. Not convinced? Good. I’d be surprised if you gave in that easily. For a small introduction to the ingenuity, take a look at this:

You have 10 pets (wow, someone loves animals), some of which are cats, and the rest dogs. You feed each dog 6 biscuits, and each cat 5, and find that you needed 58 biscuits in total.

How many of the 10 pets are cats, and how many dogs?

To answer this question very mechanically, you could write out your standard pair of algebraic equations and solve them. That’s just a waste of space and time, and I’m not even exaggerating.

Let’s say we gave 5 biscuits to each of the 10 pets first. We’re done with 50 biscuits, so we have 8 left. By now, the cats have eaten their full, and the dogs need one more biscuit each. That simply means that there are 8 dogs, and so 2 cats.

(Some of you might’ve noticed that what we’re doing in the solution is essentially solving the equations. However, just writing down the equations won’t give you an idea of what’s actually going on. This is the essence.)

You don’t need to be a mathematician to enjoy mathematics.

You don’t even have to take it very seriously. You do, however, need to give it a chance. And Exponent Zero tries to put its best foot forward.

If you have any questions or would just like to get in touch, visit our Contact page.

Moved from Blogger to WordPress, 7th July, 2013.