North Dakota is the home of the founder of Road Sign Math. It is with great pleasure, and difficulty, that North Dakota makes it’s debut with a mathematically significant roadsign. After driving for nearly one thousand miles through North Dakota and not seeing a single sign that had a mathematical relationship it was a delight to finally find a sign, however lacking in glamour, that was a winner! This very flat, and somewhat barren state, seems to be challenging to those that live in it as well as those that seek mathematics inside of it.
Continuing it’s popularity the square root function shows up again. While this is a rather “plain Jane” sign, it was still very exciting to find after hours of searching.
\sqrt{4} = 2
This sign is found on US-2 heading east towards Grand Forks where it intersects with highway 18, providing a connection to county road 4. The GPS coordinates are approximately N47 56 48.6 W97 37 25.2. See sign on map!
Ed.: North Dakota marks the 20th state to appear on Road Sign Math! We are on a wonderful march to bring every state in America to the website!
2 responses so far ↓
1 Jim Bernard // Sep 14, 2005 at 9:48 pm
Before I get too paranoid, it does seem to me that if one were to fake a sign (not that anyone is accusing anyone else of such), one would probably find some crazy math.
Still, this unusual submission does beg for an explanation.
2 Road Sign Math // Sep 16, 2005 at 6:27 am
I agree the photo is odd. It appears to be a sign assemblage hanging in white space. This is a byproduct of the photographic process. Let me explain.
The picture was taken from a stopped car on the side of the road. This car is an Audi A6 Avant. The car being low, and the sign being higher, resulted in a picture of the sign with the wonderful blue sky of North Dakota behind it. If the car in question were to have been a Hummer or large pick-up truck, I would have had a very different picture.
Where is the sky you say? All pictures that appear on RSM are cropped and adjusted in Photoshop to tweak it optimally for the sign. In this case, the camera used had unerexposed the sign a bit due to the big, bright sky behind it. To compensate, I adjusted the brightness something like +30 and the contrast +10. This left the big, bright sky just white. And the resulting image is what we have.
I considered posting the original, unmodified picture to clear any doubts naysayers may have. However, I do not have it anymore (of course this statement alone for those that know me and digital photos is mildly incriminating — me delete photos?). And clearly, while you only suggested cheating may be the case here, a sign more interesting than SqRt(4) = 2 would come if one were to endeavor into such unseemly areas.
Hope this clears up any confusion.
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