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It’s a dog’s world

A growing body of research suggests that animals probably learnt to add, subtract and multiply long before humans did! A mathematician, Tim Pennings, of Hope College in Holland, Michigan, recently discovered that his dog could do Calculus.

On every holiday, Tim threw a ball into the water and noticed that his dog, Elvis, would run along the beach and then jump into the water and swim at an angle towards the ball. That is actually a good strategy, swimming is slow compared to running, so swimming all the way to the ball would take longer even if the route was more direct. So, Elvis was actually doing Calculus because he knew how to calculate the minimum time to get to the ball. For all you know, your dog probably knows the shortest route home better than you do!

bookworm

Pottering around

They would have made J.K. Rowling proud. 11 and 12-year-old children from different schools displayed their fondness for Harry Potter and his friends during a quiz contest organised at the Patchi store in south Calcutta on July 17. The teams were named after the four houses at Hogwarts. There was stiff competition. Gryffindor won the contest while Slytherin and Hufflepuff tied for the second place, and Ravenclaw came third.