Road Sign Math

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Double Square

June 12th, 2005 · 8 Comments

New York

Another mathematically significant roadsign from rural New York found by previous winner David Slauenwhite. Harpursville is too small to leave much of a trace on the Internet but the city of Binghamton is a good sized college town with around 47,000 people. Binghamton is known as the “carousel capital of the world“ with six working carousels in the region. It is also home to the fifth-oldest zoo in the nation, which given the history of zoos is likely something to have mixed feelings about.

This sign takes square roots to a new place for road sign math! Nowhere in the rules is there are requirement that intermediate calculations must result in a number that is on the sign, as such, this is a winner by using a double squrare root. It would be pretty amazing to find a sign that took this to one more square root. (I keep wanting to use MathML on RSM, particularly for the square root sign, but very few browsers support it so instead of a real square root sign nested with another you get this text approximation.)

\sqrt{\sqrt {16} } = 2

This sign is on Route 7 where it intersects with Route 79. If you wish to visit this sign it is easily seen by taking Exit 8 off of I-88, the exit for Harpursville, NY. The GPS coordinates are approximately N42 11 20.1 W75 38 14.0. See sign on map!

Tags: New York

8 responses so far ↓

  • 1 John Attamack // Jun 24, 2005 at 6:34 pm

    It IS possible to get from 16 to 2 in a single operation. The fourth root of a number is the square root of its square root. Thus, the fourth root of 16 is 2. If you want to have a "third" square root in a single sign, you are wanting a sign that shows both a number and its *eighth* root. The most likely such pair of numbers would be 256 and 2. The trick now is to find such a pair, namely, of two cities that are 258 miles apart with an important intersection occurring 2 miles from one of them, and no obvious, more important places closer than 256 miles away in the other direction. Try Alaska, or maybe some remote part of the west. Meanwhile, if you think about it, the 16 and 2 combination on a city guide sign is probably pretty common. There are lots of places that are 18 miles apart with not a lot in between them.

  • 2 Dylan // Jun 24, 2005 at 8:39 pm

    Short gripe: Binghamton is not a college town.

  • 3 Road Sign Math // Jun 26, 2005 at 4:26 pm

    My apologies for the misclassification of Binhamton as a college town. This is one fo the risks of writing these descriptions from a distance.

  • 4 Alex // Jun 30, 2005 at 4:14 pm

    Binghamton is a college town, try BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY!!!

    I live there, I know.

  • 5 Larry // Jul 3, 2005 at 9:16 pm

    No MathML? Just use an inline image, run in with the text. I just created one, but don’t seem to have a way to attach it.

  • 6 Road Sign Math // Jul 14, 2005 at 7:21 pm

    Further thought on using the 4th root — it wouldn’t actually work in this case because there is no "4" on the sign to use next to the square root sign.

  • 7 Caleb // Feb 14, 2006 at 6:37 pm

    I also live in Binghamton. Alex is probably bedazzled by the "new" (also stupid) area motto - The Greater Binghamton Area" Binghamton University is a couple of miles west of Binghamton. It is in the Town of Vestal.

  • 8 Rob // Aug 12, 2006 at 4:16 pm

    How far is Vestal from the City of Binghampton?

    I do not know Binghampton, but I know Albany. The main campus of the University at Albany is actually located in the town of Guilderland, not Albany. However, the original location of the university was Downtown Albany. Though the school has relocated to Guilderland, I support the University’s decision not to name the school University at Guilderland. Despite the factual inaccuracy, I let it slide.

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