Posted on December 27, 2011

Last week a friend who is a fourth grade teacher came to me with a math problem. The father of one of his students had showed him a trick for checking the result of a three-digit multiplication problem. The father had learned the trick as a student himself, but he didn’t know why it worked. My friend showed me the trick and asked if I had seen it before. This post describes this check and explains why it works.

Suppose you want to multiply 231 times 243. Working it out by hand, you get 56133. Add the digits in the answer (5+6+1+3+3) to get 18. Add the digits again to get 9. Stop now that you have a single digit.

Alternatively, do this digit adding beforehand. Adding the digits of 231 together, we get 7. Adding the digits of 243 together, we get 9. Multiply 7 times 9 to get 63, then add these digits to get 9. We got 9, just as we did before. And that’s the check: You have to get the same thing with either process.

This almost seems like magic, but there’s some interesting basic number theory going on here.

http://mikespivey.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/digit-sums/

An obscure but interesting fact.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Everett_Horton

So the US has the largest population of English speakers. Care to guess which is #2?

No fair peeking at Google until after you make an educated guess. Be honest. This will be fun.

"You guys are being nice guys" and "I want to see more defiance!" were just some of the accusations hurled at the congressman in a heated session that included questions about the supposed IRS scandal and the current lodestar of conservative lunacy – Benghazi.

Harris is not alone.

Blake Farenthold, another Tea Party Republican from Texas, who voted against the fiscal cliff deal as well, and told constituents "there are several [cabinet] departments we could completely get rid of", was assailed by "birthers" for the GOP's failure to impeach President Obama. (His defense was not that impeachment would be insane, but that it would be infeasible.) Tea Partiers in North Carolina pummeled Congressman Robert Pittenger for refusing to support defunding Obamacare even thought he has supported a number of bills repealing Obamacare.

Indeed, across the nation, Republican senators and congressmen are finding themselves under withering assault from Tea Party critics.

After three and a half years of legislative hostage-taking and policy nihilism and unceasing, uncompromising obstructionism of President Obama's agenda, the message from the Tea Party is a simple one: we want more crazy.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/15/republicans-big-problem-with-crazy

HIDALGO COUNTY - A Mission neurologist is struggling to keep his practice afloat as he waits to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from insurance companies.

Dr. Miguel Gutierrez said the companies owe him for services he already provided to patients.

Since the rollout of managed care, several insurance companies now coordinate coverage for those patients on Medicaid or Medicare. He said the change brought a whole new world of paperwork and past-due bills.

Gutierrez said he works at least 70 hours a week. He has to see at least 55 patients just to break even.

Lisa Luna is one of those patients.

"He's the one that's been helping me. The other doctor didn't help me at all," Luna said.

"One after another, one after another ... all day long. If I go slow, I'm in trouble in the afternoon," he said.


http://www.krgv.com/news/neurologist-unable-to-get-payment-from-managed-care-organizations

http://www.krgv.com/news/doctor-struggles-to-keep-practice-afloat

Everything changed last year when managed care made its way to the Valley. Gutierrez said he had to take out a loan in early 2013 to keep his practice afloat.

Gutierrez said he wrote a letter to President Obama asking for help. He said it is ultimately the patients who suffer the consequences of managed care.

Gutierrez said many doctors are closing their practices and moving out of the Valley.

Gutierrez said most of his patients are on Medicare or Medicaid.

"You should see the stacks of paper in billing. They send it back if there is a little mistake ... and they don't tell you what the mistake is. You have to do everything," Gutierrez said.

He said the paperwork is just the beginning.

Blizzard 2013 Haiku:

Snow is approaching,
windshield wipers sticking up,
pleading for mercy.

Your turn.

Mexico's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the release of a Frenchwoman who had been sentenced to 60 years in prison for her alleged role in a kidnapping ring.

...

One justice had proposed that a lower court reconsider its sentence against Cassez, calling witness testimony identifying Cassez as a kidnapper invalid. But ultimately, the court ruled that there were so many significant irregularities during Cassez's detention and trial that she should be released from prison immediately.

"These violations of the human rights of Florence Cassez are so serious that they create a corrupting effect in the entire process that makes it impossible for the Supreme Court to validate this process, this detention, all of these violations," said Arturo Zaldivar, one of the justices.

...

But a well-known anti-crime advocate in Mexico criticized the high court's decision.

"It seems to me that this opens the door to impunity and leaves the victims empty-handed," said Isabel Miranda de Wallace, president of a prominent Mexican anti-kidnapping group.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/23/world/americas/mexico-frenchwoman-freed