Math Brain Teaser: Concentric Shapes or The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 2 of 2

If you missed Part 1, also writ­ten by puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll, you can start there and then come back here to Part 2. Con­cen­tric Shapes: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2.Difficulty: HARDER Type: MATH (Spatial)Question:Imagine a square with­in a cir­cle with­in a square.The cir­cle just grazes each square at exact­ly four points.Find the ratio of the area of the larg­er square to the smaller.In this puz­zle you are work­ing out many of the same skills as in Part I: spa­tial visu­al­iza­tion (occip­i­tal lobes), mem­o­ry (tem­po­ral lobes), log­ic (frontal lobes), plan­ning (frontal lobes), and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion (frontal lobes).Click to read the Solu­tion and Explanation.

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Lifelong Learning and Brain Health Event in San Francisco on May 16

If you are in the Bay Area, we hope to see you at this event! Feel free to for­ward the invi­ta­tion below to any­one you know who may be inter­est­ed. The grow­ing move­ment for improv­ing brain health has brought many inter­est­ed pro­fes­sion­als and inter­est­ed com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to the table. Shar­ing our infor­ma­tion, activ­i­ties, and planned…

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Brain Exercise for the Frontal lobes: the McKinsey Mind

My first full-time job was as a strate­gic con­sul­tant at McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny. A very intense 2‑year learn­ing expe­ri­ence. Their Alum­ni News Ser­vice recent­ly inter­viewed me and pub­lished this great arti­cle on Sharp­Brains. The writer does a superb job of pro­vid­ing an overview of what we do, so I rec­om­mend you read it. I’d like…

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Math Brain Teaser: The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 1 of 2

Here is anoth­er math­e­mat­i­cal puz­zle from puz­zle mas­ter Wes Car­roll … The Unkind­est Cut Of All, Part 1 of 2.Difficulty: HARD.Type: MATH (Spatial).Question:The area of a square is equal to the square of the length of one side.So, for exam­ple, a square with side length 3 has area (3^2), or 9. What is the area of a square whose diag­o­nal is length 5?

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#14 Brain Teaser: Party For Polyglots

We are delight­ed to intro­duce you to Puz­zle Mas­ter Wes Car­roll who has gra­cious­ly cre­at­ed a few new puz­zles to bend all those sharp brains out there! Wes aspires to the Renais­sance ide­al of excel­lence in mul­ti­ple fields: he is the head of Do The Math pri­vate tutor­ing ser­vices, Puz­zle Mas­ter for the Ask A Sci­en­tist lec­ture series, and an inter­na­tion­al­ly tour­ing per­former and teacher of music. Find out more at wescarroll.com.Party For Polyglots.Question:Of the 100 peo­ple at a recent par­ty, 90 spoke Span­ish, 80 spoke Ital­ian, and 75 spoke Mandarin.At least how many spoke all three languages?

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Bilingual brains stay sharp longer

In study, Bilin­gual brains stay sharp longer We have seen a num­ber of stud­ies on why and how speak­ing more than one lan­guage may help build a Cog­ni­tive Reserve (inter­view with Yaakov Stern) that pro­tects us against cog­ni­tive decline. This arti­cle does a good job at explain­ing what may be going on (bold added by me):…

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