## Any Requests?

I’m thinking to do a second Mathematics A-To-Z Glossary. For those who missed it, last summer I had a fun string of several weeks in which I picked a mathematical term and explained it to within an inch of its life, or 950 words, whichever came first. I’m curious if there’s anything readers out there would like to see me attempt to explain. So, please, let me know of any requests. All requests must begin with a letter, although numbers might be considered.

Meanwhile since there’s been some golden ratio talk around these parts the last few days, I thought people might like to see this neat Algebra Fact of the Day:

People following up on the tweet pointed out that it’s technically speaking wrong. The idea can be saved, though. You can produce the golden ratio using exactly four 4’s this way:

$\phi = \frac{\cdot\left(\sqrt{4} + \sqrt{4! + 4}\right)}{4}$

If you’d like to do it with eight 4’s, here’s one approach:

And this brings things back around to how Paul Dirac worked out a way to produce any whole number using exactly four 2’s and the normal arithmetic operations anybody knows.