Mistakes

Intersecting Powers and Roots

Here is an interesting little question. Its answer is simple, and not hard to see just by graphing examples; yet the algebra is easy to get wrong, as we’ll see several times. And subtle errors deserve study.

Parallel Vectors: Missing a Solution

(A new question of the week) We were recently asked to check work on an interesting little question about parallel vectors, and I was almost convinced that there was no solution … until I realized there was one! How was it missed? How can we avoid doing that? That’s our goal today.

Probability: Cards vs Dice

(A new question of the week) A couple recent questions involved related subtleties in probability and combinatorics. Both were about apparent conflicts between similar problems involving cards and dice.

Non-homogeneous Recurrence Relations

(A new question of the week) A recent question asked us to find errors in solving recurrence relations by the method of undetermined coefficients. We’ll see several things that can go wrong, and correct some misunderstandings.

Two Integration Puzzlers

Two recent questions (that came to us within two hours) dealt with apparent contradictions in integration. The first seems to give a result of zero that is clearly wrong; the second seems to give two different results for the same integral.