John Urschel
The New York Times
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Past articles by John:
Math Teachers Should Be More Like Football Coaches
That style of motivation could help in the classroom, too. → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 12
Welcome to Week 12 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 11 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week, we’re going to look at one problem — but it’s a hard one. Consider the set of integers: 0, ±1, ±2, ±3, ±4, … Even though it’s infinite, this… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 11 Answers
In week 11, we looked at a scenario that football coaches face all the time: when to go for two. If you haven’t had a chance to tackle the problems yet, click here. 1. Most football coaches might try to answer this question by mumbling about momentum or trusting your players. But you are too smart to do that. You don’t have to trust your gut. You can use mathematics to figure out which gives you… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 11
Welcome to Week 11 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 10 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week, we’re going to have a little bit of fun with football. 1. Suppose you’re the head coach of the Washington Sentinels. You’re trailing Detroit by… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 10
Welcome to Week 10 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 9 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week, I’m going to pose a thought experiment that was proposed to me last week. Someone asked me how many stars are behind the moon. Now, this is a… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 9
Welcome to Week 9 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 8 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week we’re going to try to show a very beautiful relation involving the sum of cubes and the square of sums. I claim that (1 + 2 + 3 + … + n)^2 = 1^3 +… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 8
Welcome to Week 8 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 7 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week, we are focusing on a single problem. It happens to be one of my favorite. The question goes as follows: Consider the infinite sum of alternating… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 7
Welcome to Week 7 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 6 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week we’re going to have some fun with chess. I can’t claim the three puzzles this week. These puzzles were suggested by child prodigy and chess… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 6
Welcome to Week 6 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 5 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week, we have three puzzles involving time. 1. It takes five pigs five minutes to eat five kilograms of meat. How long does it take 99 pigs to eat 99… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 5
Welcome to Week 5 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. You can find solutions to the Week 4 puzzles here, along with — more importantly — discussions of some ways to approach them. Remember that the real goal here is to think creatively. This week I have three puzzles from my favorite puzzle book, The Moscow Puzzles. Translated from Russian, this is the most popular puzzle book ever… → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 4
Welcome to Week 4 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. This week we’re playing around with digits. → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 3
Welcome to Week 3 of the Wednesday Morning Math Challenge. This week we’re playing around with digits. → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 2
Last week we were playing around with my favorite number. This week, well ... hopefully you can figure out the common theme! → Read More
The Wednesday Morning Math Challenge: Week 1 Answers
Here you'll find the answers to last week's puzzles. I hope you noticed what all of these questions had in common. → Read More
Morning Math Challenge
Each week I’ll give you three puzzles. What unifies every one of these problems is that each one will make you think. → Read More
My Three Favorite Math Puzzles
When I’m working on a math problem, I have to understand my work well enough to convince myself that it’s right. → Read More
Back to School
Of course, my schedule presented problems. When school began last September I was studying the Ravens playbook instead of partial differential equations. → Read More
The Parity Ideal
There are different ways to measure parity. Its vagueness is one of the reasons it’s a convenient goal. → Read More
The Hard Math of the Cinderella Story
Football is a numbers game. One grass field, 120 by 53 1/3 yards. Six points for a touchdown, three for a field goal. Four chances to make 10 yards. → Read More
Math Meets Football: Is the New Extra Point a Game Changer?
The expected points for two-point conversions is greater, so of course all 32 NFL teams are going to do away with extra points and go for two every time, right? → Read More