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What role does chance play in a board game? It can vary widely, ranging from total dominance, where players have no say at all, to complete absence. Between the two extremes, the strategies of many games rely on optimizing probabilistic principles.
To mark the publication of issue 200, Tangente organized a problem-writing competition. Nine of the forty-three puzzles submitted received prizes, but many others deserved one too. We asked the jury members to single out their personal favorites.
The beauty of mathematical problems often lies in an imaginative method—a "haha," as Martin Gardner called it—that makes the solution seem obvious, provided we can find a fresh perspective.
The harmonic series is one of the few divergent series that frequently arises in science. In mathematics, naturally, but not only there: it also turns up in a theater, in the guise of an absent-minded spectator who has forgotten his seat number, and in problems involving stacks of sugar cubes.
