Puzzling Queen

New Preferences in My Life

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:34:00 +0000

Like my readers have noticed, I haven't been very active despite all my promises earlier. My life has had unexpected twists and turns many times in the past, but the latest beats them all.

I have become a double grandmother! My son had a daughter 8 weeks ago and my daughter had a son 1.5 weeks ago. All the time I find myself thinking about them (and their parents), and other activities suffer from my absence of mind. Nevertheless, I am enjoying every moment!

Constraints and Creativity in Mathematics and Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:55:00 +0000

I wrote earlier about Hannu Rajaniemi and his wonderful performance at the The International Science Day. Here is a video from the scene. Mathematics and fiction are not very different.

Hannu Rajaniemi: Escape from the Castle of If (Constraints and Creativity in Mathematics and Fiction) from Suzi McEndoo on Vimeo.

How To Have A Great Holiday At Home

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 04:29:00 +0000

Time really flies! Four years have passed since Dave Green visited us last time. Dave is the president of Conceptis puzzles, which provides my fix for Japanese puzzles. I have visited in Israel four times now but Dave has been in Finland only twice and both times in October, when Finland is dull, grey and dark. No snow yet but all the trees have dropped their leaves and the weather is awful. Now I had the chance to show Finland in all it's beauty and light. There is something magical in the Finnish summer.

I will tell about things which made an impression to Dave. Since I am not sure about his order of preference, I have listed them chronologically.

The weather

Dave was travelling by plane from Moscow and we picked him at the airport. The weather was hot and sunny. My Israeli friends have always warned me about the hot weather in Israel in the summertime, and now I had the chance to show Dave, that ours it not so very different. The air was very moist and we could actually feel a thunderstorm coming.

On our way, quite near Turku, we actually had some rain and saw lightnings. In Turku the sun did not shine but it was still about 30 degrees Celsius. The thunderstorm reached Turku later, when Dave was in his hotel resting. Sunday the weather was hot and sunny again, except when Dave wanted a break for rest and some work on the computer we had a huge thunderstorm with lots of water again. As if Dave was good friends with our ancient god of weather, Ukko. Three hours later when he was ready, the weather was very nice again.

River Boats on the banks of Aura River in Turku

After Dave's rest after the trip he was hoping for some coffee and I knew exactly the place where to take him. Turku is situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, and the centre of Turku is located on both sides of the river. A typical place in Turku to drink something in summer are the river boats. There are 11 reastaurant boats in the river and some of them are open even in winter. The food is usually served inside the boat, but the decks are wonderful places to drink some beer or coffee like we did on the deck of Cindy. Dave had some foreign puzzle magazines with him and while we were having our coffee, he showed me the latest products worldwide.

These boats are something which is very typical of Turku. When the spring comes and sun starts to warm us and while most people would think the weather is still too cold, the first ones are celebrating the the departure of the winter on the boats drinking beer or cider.

Restaurants

Saturday we had dinner in restaurant Smör, which is a highly considered Scandinavian restaurant. We had our own cabinet, since all of my family was also present. The food was excellent and this was the first time when someone explained all the incredients on my plate. According to Dave and my son the wine was also good, but I don't drink wine and can't confirm that. The desserts were the weirdest I have ever seen. Huge plates and the portions scattered artistically on it. Also those who had dessert said that everything tasted very different than they expected. I am not sure if that is a good thing. I was so full by then that I only drank some coffee. We had so much fun talking and joking. Dave is great company and we had many laughs about small things happening while we were eating. As an example the waiter, a young guy, came to pick up our plates and asked: "Are you all finished?". Dave answered: "All the others are Finnish except me." It turned out that the waiter was not either, he was from Austria. Those words seem totally different when you read them, but try to pronounce them. The difference is so small that in the restaurant you can't really hear it and Dave has the habit of taking advantage of situations like that :)

Monday I had dinner with Dave and the managing editor of Sanoma Magazines crossword/puzzle magazines. The place was Särkänlinna. It is situated on a small island just outside Helsinki. The place is beautiful, and the restaurant has been built in an old fort. The weather could have been better; It was still about 20 degrees, but the sun was behind clouds. The food was fabulous and the atmosphere was just amazing. The floor was sloping and the bottoms of the water classes were inclined to get the water level horizontal. Occationally we could smell some smoke when they were preparing salmon in the kitchen.

Light

The most amazing thing in Finland at this time of the year is the amount of light. Here the sun never drops to the ocean in 15 minutes like it does in Israel but it slides gradually down. Saturday night I took Dave back to his hotel about 2 a.m. and the northern skyline was light. On that particular moment the sun was at the lowest and instead of dusk we actually saw the dawn. Sunday we were playing games outside and at 11 p.m. we still had light from the sun. It is the only thing I really miss about Finland when travelling abroad in summer. It is even weirded in the north; the sun actually never goes down and it is really hard to go to sleep unless you are using blinds.

My geeky things

I have an iPad from school and I am testing it for educational purposes. Dave had never used one and I showed him the latest Finnish success in games, Angry Birds. He did not quite get the idea of the game, but I explained him that it is also a puzzle. You have to figure out where to aim, since the birds have different features and so do the walls which you have to crack. I am totally addicted to the game. Unfortunately iPad is not the best device for my puzzles. Sudokus are quite nice, but the screen is definitely too small for my large picture puzzles. iPad is even worse than my Nokia N900. Nokia has a resistive touch screen and I can use a plastic pen with it. I should have my fingers sharpened in order to draw fine lines with iPad. The stylus pen I have for iPad is just a joke and actually useful for pushing buttons, not any real writing.

One device that would suit very well to the puzzles is the fabulous Smart Board in my classroom. My school was very near and I showed Dave how Smart Boards can be used for teaching and how it would be like to use it with puzzle solving. Frankly the screen is actually too big. Solving a big puzzle while standing next to it is like having the paper right in front of your nose. The board worked fine, but it was not the optimal way either. When Dave dragged a line of dots to the board, the last dot was not visible because the cursor was left on top of it.

The Archipelago

After the visit to the school, I took Dave to see one of the peculiar places in Turku, Föri (in Finnish), which is a small ferry carrying pedestrians and bikers over Aura River. It's completely free and travels from bank to bank without any time table. Handy when you don't want to walk all the way to the first bridge of Turku. We travelled from one bank to another and back while we were waiting for the others for lunch on Sunday.

We waited for the others on the bank of the river sitting in the shadows of very old trees. Turku is very beautiful when all the trees have leaves and on sunny days people enjoy the sun sitting on the banks of the river. We had lunch on m/s Rudolfina, which is a boat taking tourists to a cruise in the Archipelago of Turku and serves a lunch buffee along the way.

The trip took two hours and the scenery is beautiful. You have to travel quite far from Turku before you can see the horizon, because everywhere we have smaller and bigger islands like in the picture.

The weather was very hot when we started. The food was good and we could avoid the heat staying on the shadowy side of the boat with a little breeze cooling us. When we came back to the harbour, the first drops of water started falling down. We did not get wet, but on my way to Kaarina the rain started. The drops were huge and the lightnings were just above me. Actually the storm had broken a couple of windows in Ruissalo and also torn away the tents they had already put up for the yearly rock festival Ruisrock. It was less than 15 minutes before we were travelling past the place on the boat.

Finnish food

Sunday night we enjoyed some traditional Finnish home cooking at my sister's place in Kaarina. The menu was created thinking of food which is not very common outside the Nordic countries.

We had crepes, which were fried outside on a large pan and served hot. The crepes had fillings which were made of fish, which my brother-in-law actually catches himself. The dessert was also crepes, but filled with woodland strawberries and some vanilla cream. The strawberries were also picked up by Hannu, who found an excellent place to get them. They are very small compared to cultured strawberries, but they are much sweeter. They are very hard to find nowadays, but Hannu did an amazing discovery this summer.

We had some fresh summer potatoes with butter, the traditional delicacy of midsummer in Finland. The potatoes do not even have peels, and we start eating them while they are still very small.

The basic incredient of the Finnish menu in summer is grilled sausages with mustard. Nowadays many people have grills heated with gas, but we made them the traditional way.

Hannu had also made some good liquor from Koskenkorva (Finnish vodka) and plums or cherries, which both were from their own trees.

Between the meals Dave was introduced to my sisters herb garden. We did not know the names of the herbs in English, but we did not have to. Dave tasted them and could say which herb it was. Tuula also grows onions, garlic, zucchini and tomatoes.

Mölkky

We played a couple of rounds of Mölkky, a fairly new Finnish outdoors game. It involves throwing a wooden pin and trying to knock down the other pins. You get points by certain rules and the game ends when someone gets exactly 50 points. If the limit is exceeded, the amount of points drops by 25. You can also be dropped out of the game if you miss all the pins on three rounds. It is amazing how easy it is to miss. The soft lawn makes the pin jump over the other pins without hitting anything.

Sanoma Magazines

On Monday Dave was visiting Sanoma Magazines because Sanoma publishes Conceptis puzzles in several sudoku magazines and one picture logic magazine called Japanilaiset Ristikot. I had the great honor to go there with him and see the people who are making these magazines and also how they do it. I just loved seeing all this and hearing all the details and problems which can occur when choosing the puzzles and placing them on the magazine. Even titles take space and can force the puzzle smaller. They know what the optimal square size is, but it is not very simple to get that size on every puzzle. Finland has a long history of solving crossword puzzles, but these logic puzzles are hard to find even in Europe. I consider myself lucky to have Conceptis magazines here. I was so fascinated by all the details that I stayed longer than I was originally supposed to. I hope my opinions did not bother Dave too much. I was so thrilled about explaining how we puzzlers think (or at least some of us).

Good Company

The three days were filled with laughter. Dave and my son are people who notice when someone accidentally places his words wrong and make jokes about it. I love this incidental fun since it makes me pay attention to my words. It happens in my classes also. I think I have figured out my sentences but somehow they come out funny. It is good to have some laughs among the more serious studying.

My family jokes a lot, and our jokes don't necessarily open up to all people. Dave shares our humor and even acts as a catalyst for others. I'll give one example, which cracked the others totally. My dog Piitu is a Welsh Corgi Pembroke and The Queen of England is famous for her Corgis and Dorgis, which is a Corgi-Dacshund hybrid. Suddenly my son asked : " Why did Elisabeth have to make a Dorgi?" No one obviously knew. The answer: "She was locked out". At this point we were still looking at each other puzzled but burst into laughter when Olli refrased the answer: "She did need a door key." Once again the joke does not work when it is written, but read it out loud.

The dinner with the managing editor of Sanoma was also filled with interesting conversations and fun. When we did not find the right names for birds or flowers, I googled them with my iPad. That is a good use for the device. It is stylish to have on your table even on a fancy restaurant and you can get answers to your problems while having the conversation. For checking the last train or the time tables of buses it was not so good. The pages were very hard to open but they might have applications for that :)

Weird Finnish people

I have actually always considered myself to be weird, because I love mathematics and puzzles and love to spend my time on the computer. When my sister and his husband told Dave about their hobbies I started to think that I just seemed to look like the normal one. Hannu catches fish almost all year long with a net which he even puts under the ice. His catch is about 25 kg/year in file and he uses also roaches, which are not considered good for eating because they have quite many small bones. He puts them in cans and uses a pressure cooker. The method makes the fish so smooth that the bones dissolve in the mixture. Hannu also picks huge amounts of mushrooms and berries. Tuula grows the herbs and vegetables and it's like they are prepared to hibernate during winter time.

Hannu also carves plates and bowls out of wood, makes knives and the leathercases for them and Tuula makes the decorations. Tuula makes things out of clay; candle holders, plates, lamp shades and anything you can imagine.

How to have a vacation at home

The three days Dave was here, were like a holiday for me, even though I was spending them in my normal surroundings. Normally I don't even pay so much attention to the usual things but when I started looking at them with Dave's eyes, I noticed how wonderful Finland actually is. Dave is very good company and I enjoyed the discussions we had. I hope the other people in Conceptis take Dave's example and come here for a change instead of me going to Israel. I love Israel but talking about Finland is not the same. You have to see it yourself.

Thanks Dave for visiting!

Exploring the Intersection Between Science and Art

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 05:37:00 +0000

I had the most wonderful day Last Sunday. My hometown Turku is one of the European Capitals of Culture 2011 and there are all kinds of events throughout the year. I did not however expect anything very special for me, but it turned out I was wrong. In the local newspaper I found out about The International Science Day - Science Meets Art. I have watched Ted talks and wondered how nice it would be to attend one and now I got the chance to see many outstanding speakers talk about quantum physics, mathematics and how these two hars subjects can be presented in a fun and a creative way.

One of my favorites was Hannu Rajaniemi, the author of Quantum Thief, a new sci-fi book which I love! Hannu is Finnish but Lives in Scotland, has a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics. He was talking about the differencies and similarities in Mathematics and Fiction. Mathematicians create imaginary objects and determine relations and rules between them and start playing with these imaginary things. That is just what I have tried to tell people about math. It is based on the creativity of the scientists! Other sciences use the results of this play, but it is not relevant for the mathematician. On the other hand Fiction has to have the plot, style, relations between characters and other rules. For me writing is like that; sometimes I am much more comfortable playing with my math than trying to figure out how to write logical, understandable sentences.

I also saw the premiere of the Documentary "Inside the Light", the story about dealing with single atoms and photons and making their presence visible.

Mathematics and quantum physics was used to describe what it looks like in a human's brain, what mathematics has to do with joggling and how music could be created from numbers and arithmetical operations. All the speakers made these hard scientific things so much more comprehensible even for people who don't know the theory so well.

I will get back to more details later, but here is a short video about the conference with a couple of interviews

I have never attended a cofenference or a seminar which would have fascinated me more!

Testing iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 07:49:00 +0000

Yesterday I got my schools iPad for testing. We hope to give computers to our students because the matriculation exam will involve using computers as early as 2014. I have never actually use a Mac before and this is a whole new adventure to me. All the things I am accustomed to are different and I am still having hard times finding things. If Windows is filled with folders and subfolders and buttons, iPad seems to be lacking them. I have used several touch devices before; my phone is Nokia N900, my husband has an android based touch phone and I use the smart board daily. Still I don't seem to handle this device well. Choosing text is weird. Tapping on the screen may choose one word, one chapter, or the whole screen and the text "copy" appears on a black bubble. Now I am wondering how I will accomplish that when I really want to copy something. Also the predictive writing gives me hard times. The default language is now Finnish and typing English creates funny sentences. The odd thing is that if a suggestion appears, I have to close it. If I don't, the suggested text appears. That is so different from all my previous Nokia phones where I have to choose the suggested word if I want to take advantage of it. The funniest suggestion yesterday was changing my username " lekahe" to ketale, which is Finnish and could be translated as a crook!

Why Do We Have to Use Social Media in Schools?

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 06:25:00 +0000

Why Social Media?

My blog has not been updated like it used to and the reason is just lack of time. I started all my social media activities at the same time I started this blog, August 2007. At first it was just a hobby to me, but connecting to other people in the digital world, I realized that this is the way the younger generations see the world. All the phones they know are mobile, they manage their life through Facebook, write and read blogs and use text messages instead of emails.

On the other hand in schools we teachers would like to keep the teaching the same it has been for decades. We have the new text books, which are somewhat more colourful than in my schooldays. We prefer black boards and photo copies and some advanced teachers have adopted the documentaty cameras and projectors or even have their notes on Power Point. Luckily the overhead projectors are dying.

Digital Age

What we should realize is that the digital age is here. Instead of writing everything down on their notebooks, students want to use tablet computers or netbooks. Those are something they use on their free time but the schools make them go back to the ancient methods. Textbooks can be digital and even interactive and we could save lots of trees by not printing them. Using the internet does not limit ourselves to just one book but we can use all of them.

The teachers are still needed to guide the students to choose the right paths and explain things the students don't understand. However many teachers are very reluctant to adopt any technology in their teaching. I can understand them. They were students in the old world and did not use computers while they studied. In fact no one really taught them to use computers unless maybe their own children did.

Now it is time for all teachers to update their technological knowledge and reverse their thinking because the digital generation is growing up! See for yourself.

Merry Christmas from Finland

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 13:37:00 +0000

I have clearly neglegted my blog this year. I hope I will continue blogging soon to tell all about mt activities meantime. Now some Christmas photos.

I actually found a department store window which was designed for Christmas. When I was a child it was more usual but stores have given up these themed windows.

Our Christmas tree is very thick this year! Thank you Tuula and Hannu!

Taking photos of the dogs was not very succesful. The best one I got when I had actually given up.

The beautiful lights on the graveyard. We went there to light candles for my father, grandmother and aunt. This is a place where they don't put stones with names on them. My family has preferred this option.

Turku Bridge is falling down

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:01:00 +0000

Tomorrow I probably have to rethink my way to work. Before yesterday Turku had 5 bridges for crossing river Aura by car. Yesterday morning one of the bridges, Myllysilta, started to fall down. Here is a picture of the bridge taken earlier.

Image by Anssi Koskinen

The bridge was built in 1975 and it developed many problems for the city in the very beginning. It was praised as the the most beautiful and the cheapest bridge ever built but the arch like structure was not as strong as it should have been. The engineers had made a mistake in the calculations and the bridge fell some centimetres before it was even taken in use. The bridge was finally repaired in 1987 by Turku with 4 million Finnish marks.

Yesterday morning someone noticed that the bridge had fallen and it was taken off use. In the morning it had fallen 15 cm but by the end of the day the middle of the bridge was 94 cm lower than originally. Here is a short video of my walk near the bridge about noon. I could not get any closer because of the police tapes.

Here is the situation in the evening. The picture is taken by my friend mvallius.

Now it is not certain if the bridge will collapse or not. It probably has to be rebuilt and it takes more than a year before the new one can be taken in use. Meanwhile, the other one-way bridge nearby has to be converted to two-way traffic. A chaos will be expected anyway. I do not use the bridge in question very often, but the traffic will be transferred to the one I use. I think I will start driving the motorway instead of the shortest option.

Famous In Japan?

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 10:24:00 +0000

I have been featured in a Sudoku book. Conceptis Japan made a book for a Japanese publisher, Kasakura Shuppan. In the book they introduce a puzzle friend who has solved four of the puzzles and his/her solving time is revealed beside the puzzle. Chie, the manager of Conceptis Japan, asked me if I knew someone who would like to get introduced there. I decided that I could as well do it myself.

So here are two of the puzzles I had to solve. Solving them as fast as possible was more stressful than I thought. I usually pay no attention to the clock. The hardest one took me 28 minutes!

With the sample books I got this note from Chie :)

When I showed the book to my family, no one was thrilled to have the book with my autograph!

Odd Finnish Winter Hobbies

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 08:03:00 +0000

The winter in Finland is as nice as it can get. Snow and around -20 degrees Celsius. The nature is so white and clean and beautiful.

For some people this is really the time they are excited about the cold. My husband is one of those people who loves swimming in ice. I never do this, not because of the cold, but the water. I hate water and don't swim even in the summertime. Here is a picture of my husband having fun yesterday at sunset and that was about 3 pm.

Wikipedia has an article about Ice Swimming, in case you got excited about it.

Year 2009 in Pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:05:00 +0000

January
Best friends

February
Solving a puzzle

March
Birthday 2 years!

April
Warm outside!

May
Swimming (the life jacket just in case...)

June
Regarded as excellent in a dog show

July
Tall Ships' Race in Turku

August
A summer play at the Moomin World

September
School started. A statue made of old pots and pans on the wall.

October
Sleeping on the laptop

November
Spike strip is the new hit on Finland...

December
A weekend in Tallinn

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:27:00 +0000

I wish everybody a Very Happy New Year with these pictures from my back yard. Beautiful snow has finally arrived.

Some More Math Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:17:00 +0000

As an answer to George Hart's Möbius Bagel, Serious Eats has constructed a Möbius Doughnut

Then I saw a picture on Wired Science and thought that somebody had knitted a mathematical equation in 3-D.

It turned out that it was a Mandelbulb, a 3-D visualisation of a fractal called a Mandelbrot set. After seeing some videos like the next one, I still think that this is just like a cool knitting work...

Here is an example from a Finnish knitting blog nekkisneuleet. Using different patterns, someone could really knit a visualisation. Too bad I am not good in designing...

Finally Makezine led me to some really impressive polyhedra made of playing cards, again by George Hart

When Your Math Papers Come Alive

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:28:00 +0000

Last night I was listening The Drill Down, a podcast which is well known among the Diggers. I don't much listen to it nowadays live after they changed the time they send the podcast. Now it comes out in the middle of the night for me (1.00 am Monday morning) and if I have to work the next day, I don't want to to stay up that late. Anyway my TV was open on the background and it was on The Voice TV Finland, playing some music videos. Suddenly one of the videos caught my attention even though I had my headset on for listening to the podcast. The video is just so fascinating and the song is not bad either. My papers live also their own life but usually the other way around. Numbers and calculations start crawling among the other text and pictures :)

The Fray - Heartless:

The FRAY - Heartless from IE HAGY on Vimeo.

Puzzles and Nokia N900

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:13:00 +0000

I am a fan of all kind of gadgets and I am not very good in texting or surfing the web with my mobile phone, Nokia E90, which I bought last year. When Nokia announced the new model N900, I decided I want to have it.

I just love the phone. Web pages open fast and I have multiple desktops to save the applications and favourites I use. Everything I need I can choose with my fingertip. I am still learning to use all the features, but one of my first was to check Conceptis website. The start was a bit tricky but with persistence I finally got a result:

Now I have learned to adjust the size of the screen and to use the pen which came with the phone and I started solving a Hitori. The puzzle was a small and easy one, and I got it finished in less than 5 minutes!

What is special about this? I don't need any applications. I can go to my best website and solve the puzzles there. The trick is the Adobe Flash™ 9.4 support my phone has. The prevoius one did not show even the thumbnails of the puzzles.

Inspired By Mathematics

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:36:00 +0000

As in honour of my Christmas holiday I found two mathematics inspired items yesterday.

This ring is inspired by the Fibonacci sequence 1,1,2,3,... The pattern of the beads is the beginning of the sequence.

holmescraft's shop (via Neatorama)

This is a mathematically correct breakfast, a bagel cut and linked to make a Möbius strip

You can find the instructions here (also via Neatorama)

Fun Halloween Math

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:02:00 +0000

As you could presume, all math teachers are not boring. Check out this video by MDWeathers which he did for his Nature of Math class at Biola University, October 28, 2009.

Money Exchange Game

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:50:00 +0000

I have played a lot of flash games on PrimaryGames website. The game named Coinz! is disturbingly hard and addictive at the same time. The target of the game is to make money disappear by picking up the same amount of money using two currencies.

The first game involved exchanging Singapore Dollars to Russian Rubles. This was hard. There were lots of coins marked 1, but it is harder to determine if the coin is 1.oo or o.o1. Choosing Hint from the list on the right you can see the value when marking a coin.

After all the Singapore Dollars were exchanged the level was completed. Now the new currency was Lithuanian Litas. The exchange rate is shown above the box and below the box you can see how many Rubles you should find matching the Litas you have chosen.

Interestingly the third level seemed easier to me. Now Polish Zlotys were exchanged to Litas, and the value of the currencies being nearly the same made it easy.

A very good game in mathematics learning. I could imagine that kids are faster to find the right coins than I was.

Shift Happens - A Challenge for Teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:52:00 +0000

I first saw this video about one year ago. The video got me really thinking about the world we and especially the young people live in. I think every teacher should see this and think for a moment. Does the education we give them really prepare them for anything?

This is the new official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Did You Know 4.0

This is the previous edition from 2008 - also worth to check:

Did You Know 3.0

The 2007 version is very similar, but I included it for reference.

Did You Know 2.0

And this hopefully is the original, published earlier in 2007

Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age

Geometric Art

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:24:00 +0000

BibliOdyssey introduces scans of wonderful geometric art.

Here is an example of Lorenz Ströer's 'Geometria et Perspectiva' in 1567:

and this is an example from the large Munich University Library manuscript called: 'Geometria et Perspectiva: Corpora Regulata et Irregulata':

See all the images in The Geometric Landscape and also follow the links on the page.

Mega Pic-A-Pix

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:36:00 +0000

This week Conceptis spoiled us with a coloured mega Pic-A-Pix puzzle. It took me several days to finish doing small parts at a time. Now it is finished and as always, the picture is just beautiful!

Make Puzzles Not War

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:12:00 +0000

I have often imagined what would have happened if mathematics concepts could be copyrighted. Newton developed differentiation and integration to complete his gravitational theory. What if he had realized that the idea is very valuable and had copyrighted it? All the other scientists would have had to use other methods for various problems or had to pay Newton to use it. Science would not have developed. Pure mathematics is actually a theory of different methods and the applications are used by physicists, economists, chemists, biologists and so forth. All intellectual development had suffered. In this case Leibniz was working on the same problem at the same time and there would have been a huge argument who actually got the original idea.

Luckily ideas can not be copyrighted. In the scientific world mathematicians publish their work for the benefit of everybody. When someone creates just a problem he may get his name in history like Fermat in Fermat’s Last Theorem. Andrew Wiles has now proved the theorem but it just may happen that someone will create a much better proof and Wiles will be forgotten. Mathematics strives for the best solution and the person who provides that, gets his/her name in history.

KenKen, CalcuDoku, Square Wisdom or Mathdoku?

KenKen is a mathematical puzzle. The goal of each puzzle is to fill a grid with digits so that no digit appears more than once in any row or column. Grids range in size from 3x3 to 9x9. Additionally, KenKen grids are divided into heavily outlined groups of cells and the numbers in the cells of each group must produce a certain given number when combined using a specified mathematical operation (either addition, subtraction, multiplication or division).

The image above is not a KenKen puzzle, it is Calcudoku. KenKen is now a registered Trademark of Nextoy, LLC (as well as KenDoku) and the books containing KenKen’s are authored by Tetsuya Miyamoto, and Will Shortz; Kendoku books are authored by by David Levy and Robert Fuhrer; Dj Ape used originally the title Square Wisdom; The Puzzle Society uses the name Sukendo; The Kindle version is Mathdoku and the puzzle above is a Conceptis made Calcudoku, which name is also used by Dj Ape in the later books. The trademark does not prevent people from doing similar puzzles, it just prevents others calling them with the same name.

The abundance of different names is confusing for the general public and makes it more difficult to assess the overall popularity of the puzzle. When the Sudoku popularity was at the highest, we had many different Sudoku books and magazines available in Finland made by local puzzle makers. Now we don’t have a single KenKen (or Calcudoku) book available. If all those puzzles had the same name people would find them better and the mathematical challenge could find also people who are not puzzle addicts like me. I constantly meet mathematics teachers who never have heard of these puzzles. It will never reach the popularity of Sudoku.

Variants of Sudoku

Actually KenKen is also one form of sudoku. It is also based on a Latin Square which is an nxn table filled with n different symbols in such a way that each symbol occurs exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column.

Here are 2 examples of 5x5 Latin squares.

Sudoku is a Latin square with an additional rule: The objective is to fill a 9?9 grid so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3?3 boxes (also called blocks or regions) contains the digits from 1 to 9 only one time each. The puzzle setter provides a partially completed grid.

This puzzle is known to most people, because it became very popular and newspapers publish them daily even though the biggest boom is over. The amount of different Sudoku answers is of course smaller than that of 9x9 Latin Squares because of the 3x3 box rule. The amount of puzzles is bigger and depends on the givens, the numbers provided on the puzzle.

(For those who are interested on the mathematical calculations about the amount of Sudoku’s or the minimal amount of givens, I recommend the Wikipedia article on Mathematics of Sudoku. It contains links to several mathematical articles about the subject.)

Colour Sudoku

The classical Sudoku has the 3x3 boxes. The third rule can however be obtained in many ways and these puzzles are called Sudoku variants. Different lists of them can be found all over the internet. Some of the variants have made it to publications containing these variants; some of them are published regularly on Sudoku variants magazines, some others have been created just for examples. The longest list I found is made by Uwe Wiedemann.

One not so know variant is Colour-Sudoku. This example is from Added Bytes.

Here the third rule comes from the colours; every colour represents the “region” which has to contain each number only once. Here the region is totally spread all over the grid. The size would not have to be 9x9. The same arrangement could be obtained by any nxn grid.

Now Conceptispuzzles has published a new variation called Chain Sudoku. The release article got a very angry response from Strimko. Their puzzles have the same idea; the third rule defining the region is obtained by lines connecting the numbers. This variant has also different sizes. Here is an example of Conceptis Chain Sudoku.

Battle

Now Strimko says that the intellectual idea belongs to them. In some comments they also claim that the streams have not existed before and this idea is totally different from Irregular Sudoku.

Here is an irregular Sudoku, and this would make a Chain Sudoku very easily:

The Chain Sudoku contains one feature which irregular Sudoku doesn’t, the ability to link numbers diagonally.

However this is not a new idea even for Conceptis. In August 2006 Sterling published a book Snakes on a Sudoku – official Snakes on a Plane Puzzle Book and the puzzles were created by Conceptis. Here is one scan from the book:

As you can see there is also the diagonal snake. Somehow the word stream describes these better than the previous ones. To me they look chains. The logic I use in solving both types is the same!

Mathematically speaking

I have also seen a more advanced approach to connecting the numbers, a Toroidal Sudoku:

In mathematics toroid is the doughnut-shaped object. These puzzles are scanned from a magazine BBC Mind Games Christmas 2006. This could really be clued to make a doughnut, but I think it’s better to solve it first. Dr Gareth Moore publishes these regularly on his Puzzlemix website.

Mathematically speaking Strimko’s and Chain Sudoku’s are graphs, more precisely they consist of connected acyclic graphs which are called trees. An acyclic graph with multiple connected components is sometimes can be called a forest.

There is also another puzzle closely connected to graph theory: Hashi. The rules in Hashis are however totally different

As a conclusion to the above; any puzzle having the third rule in addition to the row/column –rule is just another variation in the Sudoku family. Conceptis has an algorithm to create Sudoku’s and Dave Green states in Conceptis Forums:

“To demonstrate how close these puzzles behave, it took us only several minutes to modify the algorithm and the graphical export of our Sudoku generator to enable it to produce Chain Sudoku puzzles.”

I have done some programming but my main interest is algorithms in general and I know that if the code is written using good programming, the changes are easy.

I think I answered this question.

Gareth Moore's Colour Sudoku

There is still the design, but even there Strimko is not totally original. Here is another Sudoku from Gareth Moore which uses colours instead of numbers:

My love of logical puzzles started originally from my main interest, mathematics. I think logical puzzles are very good in learning logical thinking which is a very important skill in mathematics. Puzzles are not as threatening to students as mathematics sometimes seems to be. To me it is a very sad thing that copyright issues get in the way of making these puzzles publicly known. Sudoku’s became popular because the Japanese puzzle company Nikoli, which created the name Sudoku, never trademarked it outside Japan. (Nikoli did not invent the puzzle).

Crediting Strimko

Some of the comments have been criticizing that Conceptis does not give the credit to Strimko. With all the puzzle types Conceptis has provided info about the history of the particular puzzle and I have no doubt they would have made it this time also but quoting Serhiy Grabarchuk in Conceptis Forums:

"Some months ago I warned Conceptis Puzzles that if they will use the idea of Strimko (under any name) with the same features as our Strimko, we will understand that as a direct and clear infringement of our intellectual property rights."

I hope there will be some solution to this. I wrote my opinion to my blog because I see no point in joining all the puzzling forums Strimko has left their accusations. Those who are interested in them can use Google to find them. If Conceptis decides to drop out this puzzle, I will not solve them. I want to find my puzzles on the same website. I have too many links to various social media sites and educational sites as it is!

Summer Hits

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:50:00 +0000

Summer is a very important time of the year in Finland. The sun is shining, at least now and then, and people have their holidays. Because of the relaxation and fun times, we seem to have special hit songs for the summer. They are very catching, played a lot in the radio and finally you can't get rid of the melody. It just keeps repeating in your head.

Finnish Wikipedia has even an article about summer hits in Finland years 1996 - 2009. The last three years The Voice (local radio station/Tv/net radio) has chosen the official summer hit. This year the competition was in June and the chosen one was Aste: Poikkeus sääntöön which you can listen here. The melody is very catching but I think summer hits are partly surprising. They can't be predicted; some songs just become popular. I like the song but there are others that exceeded it.

Wikipedia has also listed some foreign songs in addition to the Finnish favourite. Year 2007 it was Rihanna's Umbrella and I can agree with that one. Last year does not have any suggestions in the article.

This summer two songs have grown over the others as summer songs, at least for me. The curious thing is that even though these songs are very different, they have one thing in common. Both performances make fun of their own nationalities.

As for the foreign summer hit I declare a Swedish song Promoe: Svennebanan. The video has been shooted on a boat between Sweden and Finland. One of the tags in YouTube is Finlandsfärja, we call them Sweden's boats. The video and the song are making fun of Swedes drinking on the boat. The same film could be done about Finns also. People sometimes go to those boats just to party and get drunk. I don't even try to translate the words. It is like the usual rap lyrics. No full sentences, words cover all the activities you do on the boat.

My Finnish summer song is very different. The melody is actually very sad and it is a parody about the neighbours of a man who comes out of the closet and comes back from holiday with a lover, another man. To my surprise this song has got very controversial opinions. When I tried to find the lyrics to this song, I stumbled into many forum discussions about this. Some people thought it was against gay people, the others didn't and some people were just singing the song without realizing it has a message.

It certainly is not against gay people. It is making fun of the neighbours who obviously have never seen gay people and have all the possible prejudices against them. I know these people exist and I am not even sure if I should laugh or cry. The melody suggests the latter.

One of the things people were angry about was that the man is named as Timo Hokkanen. There are 88 people named Timo Hokkanen in Finland and the idea is not pointing at anyone of them. It just shows that the hero in the song is just an average guy and that makes the situation even more intolerable to the neighbours.

My Finnish summer hit: Vesterinen Yhtyeineen - Mitä Tapahtui Hokkasen Timolle?

The words to the song translated by me without trying to fit them into the melody:

What happened to Timo Hokkanen?

Did you heard, neighbours Timo came back from holiday
with a Lover from Berlin

refrain:
Exactly what happened to Timo Hokkanen?
Gave in to the lust of life
This can't happen among us
Not here, but elsewhere

No one of us is allowed to smile at them
They will not stand up very long, in the middle of us
Here in the middle of Us.

refrain

After all, it is always easier
When the same language is spoken
Do not need anyone to watch
What will happen on Saturday evening, in the men's sauna

This can't happen among us

What happened to Timo Hokkanen?
Gave in to the lust of life
This can't happen among us
Not here, but elsewhere.

Not here, but elsewhere.

Relaxing Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:45:00 +0000

I was on holiday. Despite my decision in the beginning of the summer vacation I just had to go to Israel for one week. The trip was too short but the feeling to be away from home made me wonders. My mind was totally reset from the past school year and even after I came home I have been able to relax instead of worrying all the things I should be doing at the moment.

At home I have spent the days in my social networks but mostly I have enjoyed my puzzles. Nowadays my main interest is Pic-A-Pix. Here are 4 screen shots of last week's 6 puzzles.

This week all the others are back to work and I am spending my days with Piitu. I should really start planning next year but as it seems I am not making very good progress. Sometimes I hope I had a job I could leave outside my home. This way it seems I am at my workplace all the time...

Sudokid - Sudoku for Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Leena Helttula) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:05:00 +0000

Sudokid is a kid’s version of Sudoku. Sudokid is very simple: Sudoku with shapes, instead of numbers. Sudokid comes with 75 Unique Game Cards- 25 at each difficulty level (easy, medium, and hard). Be careful adults, you may get addicted too...

It’s designed and developed by the Quirky community. The idea is that the product requires 300 commitments to buy before it goes into production and is made (priced at $14.99). So far 27 have been pre-sold. You’re not charged until the threshold is met.

I hope they make it, the idea is great. If you are interested, check the details here

[via Josh Spear]