Math Wizards

This week's Time magazine (2/20/06: Can We Trust Google with Our Secrets?) has an article that inspires my kids to learn math. It was a feature article on the company Google, including a description of what it was like to work for them at their world headquarters. It showed pictures of the employees getting gourmet meals (3/day), swimming in a lap pool, playing with Star Wars toys including a life size R2D2, bringing their dogs to work and more. "I want to work there," was the breakfast chorus.

One way they recruited employees was with a math problem on a billboard that if you could solve, would give you the secret webpage address for Google human resources. I don't have the skill/time to scan the article, but here is a link that has a picture of the billboard and the solution.

Rob