math

EmWave2: Portable stress relief for harried geeks

It can be hard to get a techie to relax. We are often found toiling away at Internet start-ups, programming under pressure, or blasting away at Call of Duty as enemies swarm across the lines.

The new emWave2 stress management system from HeartMath features several components that geeks love: a gadget, a computer program, and lots of cool graphs. It also has 20 years worth of stress research behind its development, but the glowing lights are what first catch your eye.

According to HeartMath, emWave technology is already being used by more than 10,000 health professionals, including 65 Veteran Administration hospitals and clinics for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. The second-generation emWave2 is designed for personal use and is portable enough to tuck in your pocket. It also adds a computer interface and desktop program that can track your results, and it has several additional applications including a slideshow and a garden game that adds colors and images as you relax.

I got my hands on the emWave2 and took it for a stress-test drive. The $229 kit includes both an ear and a thumb monitor for your heart rate. I used the thumb monitor. It also includes a line of blue lights that give you visual feedback for controlling your breathing.… Read more

World's Ultimate Brain tests your intellectual agility

Save for the cheesy name, World's Ultimate Brain is quite a well-put-together puzzle game for Android. It tests your brain's speed and agility across four different categories: Calculation, Memory, Visual Recognition, and Logic. Your simple job is to race the clock and answer as many questions correctly as possible. Once you finish, the app will calculate your score, and submit it to the worldwide leaderboard. If you're extra proud of your intellectual skills, you can even have it post your score to Facebook, Twitter, or (inexplicably) MySpace.

While World's Ultimate Brain is indeed fun, easy to … Read more

High school math wiz wins Intel Talent Search

Honoring some of the nation's brightest high school seniors for achievements in math and science, Intel yesterday awarded the three highest prizes in its Science Talent Search for three very different types of projects.

The top prize of $100,000 went to Evan O'Dorney, 17, of Danville, Calif., for a project in which he compared two ways to estimate the square root of an integer, discovering which one was the quickest. Though that may sound abstract to non-math people, the results of O'Dorney's research allowed him to solve other equations that could be used to encrypt … Read more

Circle up, math geeks! It's Pi Day

In Massachusetts today, hundreds of apple pies are being delivered to math and science teachers within a 3.14-mile radius of the Raytheon headquarters in Waltham. If that first sentence didn't clue you in as to why, then you aren't living up to your mathletic potential.

Yes, number geeks, it's 3/14, the 22nd year the date has officially been observed as Pi Day, in honor of that trigonometric wunderkind also known as 22/7. The first Pi Day observation was spearheaded by the San Francisco Exploratorium, but the museum is closed on Mondays, so this year it's up to the rest of us to pick up the slack.

Fortunately, there's no shortage of pi celebrations taking place around the world:

One of the biggest pi parties today takes place at Princeton University, where the day is also celebrated as Albert Einstein's birthday. It's all part of Princeton's Geek Freak celebration, which wraps up today--plenty of pies and Einstein look-alikes are on hand. If you're part of the Silicon Valley start-up scene, there's a SXSW Pi Day party at the British Bankers Club in Menlo Park with the requisite pi recitation contest. The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., is offering discounts today (Salvador was a big pi fan), and in Tampa at the Museum of Science and Industry you can take the Pi Day challenge, solve a series of logic-based puzzles, and get in for free.… Read more

TI accepts reality, adds color screen to latest calculator

It's almost like a "Wizard of Oz" moment for Texas Instruments, which is opening the door to color displays on its popular calculators.

Next month, the semiconductor and educational technology giant is launching the $165 TI-Nspire CX handheld, its thinnest and lightest graphing calculator ever. The specs completely blow away the TI-84 that I used in college.

Thankfully, TI has moved away from the monochromatic screen of yesteryear and boasts that the CX has a 3.2-inch 16-bit color LCD (320x240) with a respectable 125 DPI. TI also bumped up the memory in the CX series compared to previous TI-Nspire models with 100MB of onboard storage and 64MB of RAM. I can imagine hackers are already salivating to get Doom and Game Boy Color emulators running on this thing as soon as possible.

Of course, the real strength of a TI calculator is its ability to handle higher-level mathematic concepts. The TI-Nspire CX is designed for pre-algebra, algebra 1 and 2, trigonometry, geometry, pre-calculus, statistics, business and finance, biology, physics, chemistry, and calculus classes.

An alternate Computer Algebra System (CAS) model is also available and is approved for standardized testing, such as the SAT, PSAT/NMSQT, ACT, AP, IB, and Praxis exams. I wonder if it can calculate how many commas were in my last two sentences. … Read more

Three-deal Tuesday: A flash drive, a desktop, and a free download

What's better than one great deal? Three great deals, of course! Now that I'm all rested up after the long weekend, I bring you this money-saving threesome:

1. Today only, a deal-of-the-day outfit called PricePlunge has an 8GB Dane-Elec flash drive for $7.99, plus 99 cents for shipping. Compatible with Windows and Mac systems, the drive is capless and retractable, two features I quite like. Plus, it comes with a five-year warranty. I should note that I've never purchased anything from PricePlunge, so I can't vouch for the reliability of the company. (If you can, … Read more

CES: Stress relief made portable

LAS VEGAS--After a long, hard week at CES, a little stress relief is in order. But can you achieve a peaceful state through a portable PC gadget?

Being demoed at CES this week is the Emwave 2 personal stress reliever from HeartMath. This portable device lets you monitor your stress levels and help you calm down. Specifically, it monitors your heart rhythms as an indicator of how stressed you may be. To use the device, you connect it to your PC and place your finger on its small monitor. A graph charting your heart patterns then appears on the PC.… Read more

The electrical zap that makes you better at math

Perhaps you, like me, are close to someone who finds trouble counting beyond three. At least in their head.

Perhaps you, like me, occasionally express frustration in what you think is a humorous way, about this alleged inability.

Perhaps, you, unlike me, have tried to zap their brains with a shot of electricity in order to get their math skills up to that of a high school student.

Should you have tried to jolt a math dolt with a volt or two, you might have been doing the right thing. For researchers in Britain have discovered, at least according to the Telegraph, … Read more

CEOs take on White House initiative to drive tech education

A new organization led by major CEOs is hoping to make the U.S. more competitive around the world by putting the focus on education.

Announced by President Obama yesterday as part of his "Educate to Innovate" campaign, Change the Equation is a nonprofit group whose goal is to improve education in the key areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Founded by former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns among other chief executives, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, the group's membership includes 100 key industry … Read more

Better streaming audio and a unique puzzle game: iPhone apps of the week

As most people know, the thing about buying anything in the computer and gadget world is that you run the risk of your item becoming obsolete after the next revision. People often complain about Apple in this way (first-generation iPhone, anyone?), but it's mostly true across the board: with advances in technology coming so rapidly these days, the neat gadget you got this year will probably be mainstream by next year. It's just the nature of the tech business.

Even though I was armed with knowledge of the "early adopter" phenomenon well before I bought my iPad, it still hurt to read rumors over at AppleInsider saying a refresh of the iPad complete with a front-facing camera might be coming sooner rather than later. Sure, I have the ability to use FaceTime on my iPhone 4, but all that screen real estate is certainly going to make video calls better on the iPad. Much better.

So, here's your chance, readers! Go ahead and gloat--you made the right choice and waited. You didn't fall prey to the keynote for the "magical" device and now you're in the perfect position to get a better version. Congratulations! Now, try not to be too hard on me.

This week's apps include an streaming-audio app with a slick interface, and a fun and addictive puzzle game that will test your math skills.… Read more