Power Winners!

Sorry, my vast blogging audience, for my involuntary hiatus. I had intended to announce the winners of the contest on the 8th (=2³) but then my life and my job got in the way. So I decided that the 16th, which is two squared, squared, was a good alternative date. I'm future-posting this at 2:32 am, just to get a few extra powers of two in there. I may be awake at that time, but doing all the work I'm supposed to be doing rather than writing this post.

Anyhow, there were some terrific entries in the contest, and it was hard to decide who should win. In keeping with the theme, I will announce them in terms of powers of two.

2² place: A tie between Lost Clown and Rico, who describe their geektastic obsessions with cyclic groups and sums of 1/2^N, respectively. You are my kind of people! When I get around to it, I will post pictures of my powers of two cake, which illustrates concretely (actually, chocolately) the fact that the sum of 1/2^N is finite.

2²-1 place: Rachel, with the bimetalic Toonie, her favorite coin. If you bring those coins south of the border, they'll be worth more than $2. Heck, at the rate the dollar's plummeting, they might be worth $2² American sometime soon!

2¹st place: Laura, who shared a favorite song featuring the powers of two. See, math and music share a special relationship!

and...

2⁰th place: Pete, whose father, mother, and he are each twins. 'Cause that's just cool.

All those of you who are not my family members or colleagues have won a very exciting prize: your choice of a Tennessee ball cap or t-shirt.

Why? Because a) I live in Tennessee, and you don't, and b) Tennessee is a power-of-two themed state name. It has four (=2²) unique letters, each of which appears in it a power-of-two times (T -- once; e -- four times; n and s -- twice each). And, depending on where in the state you live, it is pronounced with either two or four syllables (TEN-see or TEN-uh-say-ee).

If you want to collect your prize, simply leave a comment with your choice, the size (if applicable), and a mailing address to which I can send your prize. The comments are moderated, and I promise not to publish your contact information. If you don't feel comfortable claiming your prize, don't worry about it; that's less work for me.

The Power of Twos

Today is a great day to celebrate the number two! Let me tell you why:

• The date: it's 4/4/08, or, as powers of two, it's 2²/2²/2³.
• The timestamp of this post: 4:00 (=2²) p.m. EDT, or in the 24-hour clock, 1600 (=2⁴) hours. (Attention my workplace: I created this post in the morning before leaving for work, and used the cool new scheduled posts feature in Blogger in draft.)
• Ages: Vinny is one (=2⁰), my nephew Byron is 4 (=2²), I am 32 (=2⁵), and my dad is 64 (=2⁶). Also, as of tomorrow (i.e., in =2⁰ days) Vinny will be one and a half, which is 2⁰+2^-1.
• Events: I've had my new job for half a year now (=2^-1). We've lived here for two (=2¹) years. My dad and Marvis have been married for four (=2²) years (although next weekend it will be five). I took my prelim exam almost four years ago. (Maybe those two almost average out.)
• Other interesting facts: Four (=2²) of the digits 0-9 are powers of two (1, 2, 4, and 8). Also, if we wrote out all these interesting numbers in base two, they would all consist of a single 1 followed by a number of zeros equal to the number of the exponent (e.g., 2⁵ = 100000₂).
  

In honor of this glorious day, I will (of course) be baking a powers-of-two-themed cake. (Stay tuned for pictures.) But also, I wanted to have a little contest for my vast readership.

Within the next 64 hours (that's 2 days and 16 hours, for more powers of two!), leave a comment with your favorite/most interesting connection to powers of two. I will select the "best" 2^N of them, where N could be 0 but might be more, and the winner(s) will not only gain fame but also an appropriately themed prize!

Deadline: 8:00 a.m. EDT, Monday, April 7, 2008
Your favorite/most interesting connection to powers of two.