Advanced Mathematics quiz

More questions about Advanced Mathematics

These visible examples show the question style. LearnClash turns the full topic into ranked duels and spaced repetition.

1. 1 Easy

   Why did Blaise Pascal argue that people should believe in God?

   Answer: To avoid infinite loss

   Why: Pascal never published the wager himself; it surfaced in his Pensées in 1670 and is often called the first clear piece of decision theory.

2. 2 Medium

   Which math problem did a Simpsons episode hide a near-miss equation for?

   Answer: Fermat's Last Theorem

   Why: Two episodes hid fake Fermat counterexamples, in 1995 and 1998; David X. Cohen tuned the twelfth powers to fool pocket calculators.

3. 3 Hard

   Who did Goldbach send his conjecture to?

   Answer: Leonhard Euler

   Why: Goldbach wrote to Euler on 7 June 1742; Euler answered that every even number above 2 is a sum of two primes, but could not prove it.

4. 4 Easy

   What letter represents the square root of negative one in math?

   Answer: $i$

   Why: René Descartes coined the word imaginary for these numbers in 1637, and he meant it as an insult: he doubted they described anything real.

5. 5 Medium

   In the Monty Hall problem, what is the probability of winning if you switch doors?

   Answer: 2/3

   Why: Marilyn vos Savant printed the 2/3 answer in Parade in 1990 and about 10,000 readers wrote in to say she was wrong, nearly 1,000 of them with PhDs.

6. 6 Hard

   Who set up the Millennium Prize Problems?

   Answer: Clay Mathematics Institute

   Why: Launched in Paris in 2000 with $1 million per problem; Grigori Perelman solved the Poincaré conjecture and declined the prize.