Portsmouth MathsJammers gathered  at the new venue, King Street Tavern  We were made to feel very welcome and some of us partook of the excellent food available.  A super, long table had been reserved for us which we soon filled – with apologies to the chap enjoying quiet pint and his emails at the end of the table.  We were joined by five new MathsJammers, taking our number to 12 this month and we even managed a few tweets as well.

To start us off, we filled in a few more of Mel’s2012 puzzle – trying to create the numbers 1 – 100 using 2,0,1 and 2 using just the operators +, -, / and x. We extended this by including factorials, trig and then Ed took us into the realms of tetration.  This really got the mathematical juices flowing and other puzzles were shared around the table, such as:

“There are 100 people waiting to get on a plane.  The first person in the queue has lost his boarding card and may or may not sit in the correctly allocated seat.  What is the probability that the last person to get on the plane sits in the right seat?”

There were several other corkers that we all enjoyed.  The informal puzzle solving format seems to appeal to most, although we may branch out by asking one MathsJammer to demonstrate a particularly elegant solution to a problem that we can all admire.

A good time was had by all, fuelled by good beer, company, food and the nibbles that KST supplied to keep us going.

Looking forward to the next meeting: 22 May 7.30 – 9.30pm, KST.