Sue VanHattum
Sep 7, 2018 · 1 min read

Ahh, so good to read these stories. My first experience like these happened when I was 55. I’ve loved math most of my life, but hadn’t done anything original before that, really. In 2011 I began wondering how Spot It (8 pictures per card, 55 cards) could have exactly one match on any pair of cards. How did they *do* that? During the December holidays, with help from some friends, I figured it out. I blogged about my adventures with this problem (https://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2012/01/math-adventures-thinking-about-spot-it.html) and learned from Josh Zucker that this problem is connected to a whole field of math (finite field theory).

Recently, I’ve been exploring geometric construction. I followed the steps in a youtube video to understand Archimedes’ method of exhaustion, and came up with an expression for pi that I don’t see anywhere online. So I’m writing that up now. I’m sure it’s not really new, but I think it deserves more publicity. It’s the coolest thing I know about pi.

    Sue VanHattum

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