Cafe Math

It's a good day to be a pirate. Amaro and his four mateys - Bart, Charlotte, Daniel, and Eliza have struck gold - a chest with 100 coins. But now, they must divvy up the booty according to the pirate code - and pirate code is notoriously complicated. Can you help come up with the distribution that Amaro should propose to make sure he lives to tell the tale? Alex Gendler shows how.

You and your team have crash-landed on an ancient planet. Can you appease the three alien overlords who rule it and get your team safely home? Created by logician Raymond Smullyan, and popularized by his colleague George Boolos, this riddle has been called the hardest logic puzzle ever. Alex Gendler shows how to solve it.

Your research team has found a prehistoric virus preserved in the permafrost and isolated it for study. After a late night working, you're just closing up the lab when a sudden earthquake hits and breaks all the sample vials. Will you be able to destroy the virus before the vents open and unleash a deadly airborne plague? Lisa Winer shows how.

Rubik's Cube world record-holder Collin Burns tells us how he did it.

Have you ever sat down to take a math test and immediately felt your heart beat faster and your palms start to sweat? This is called math anxiety, and if it happens to you, you're not alone: Researchers think about 20 percent of the population suffers from it. So what's going on? And can it be fixed? Orly Rubinsten explores the current research and suggests ways to increase math performance.

The meter is the world's ultimate measure, but how did it become "the" meter? What is this measurement based on? The story of this revolution in measurement traces its roots to the French Revolution. Scientists decided that an equal and united people should have equal and united measures. So they sent a pair of young astronomers out to measure the world, and invent the meter. Little did they know they'd find nothing but war, deception, and strife along the way. As a result of this ill-fated mission, the meter carries an error that still persists today. Still think the metric system is so perfect?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... and 0. With just these ten symbols, we can write any rational number imaginable. But why these particular symbols? Why ten of them?

Have you ever sat in a doctor's office for hours, despite having an appointment?

You're the realm's greatest mathematician, but ever since you criticized the Emperor's tax laws, you've been locked in the dungeon.

Can you trust your gut feelings?

20 year old Mats Valk from the Netherlands has set a new record for completing Rubik's Cube.

Get the most out of pizza with some simple math!

In a dystopian world, your resistance group is humanity's last hope. Unfortunately, you've all been captured by the tyrannical rulers and brought to the ancient coliseum for their deadly entertainment.

Why can we find geometric shapes in the night sky? How can we know that at least two people in London have exactly the same number of hairs on their head?

85650789657397829 + 1402 more digits is an illegal number. To understand why this is, we need to learn a little bit of cryptology, a little bit of math, and a little bit of programming.

Is the future of the universe already determined?

I'm very grateful to mathematician Hugh Woodin, Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Harvard, for taking the time on multiple occasions to discuss this topic with me and help me wrap my (finite) head around it.

Your rich, eccentric uncle just passed away, and you and your 99 nasty relatives have been invited to the reading of his will. He wanted to leave all of his money to you, but he knew that if he did, your relatives would pester you forever. Can you solve the riddle he left for you and get the inheritance? Lisa Winer shows how.

You're stranded in a rainforest, and you've eaten a poisonous mushroom. To save your life, you need an antidote excreted by a certain species of frog.

What is this? Some kind of witchcraft?!

Jacob Barnett is an American mathematician and child prodigy. At 8 years old, Jacob began sneaking into the back of college lectures at IUPUI.