Tag Archives: contest

Exploring Russia: Tourism ÷ lockdown × accelerator = winners’ podium!

Mid-spring this year, at the very peak of the everyone-at-home period, it became obvious that things were looking very bleak for the world, and would stay bleak for a long time. Business would be hard hit, to put it mildly, while the tourism industry would be fairly devastated, with many a business within it not pulling through the crisis. So we at K did what we often always do – put our thinking caps on – and decided… to help out this most badly affected of industries.

Early May I announced that the ‘Kaspersky Exploring Russia’ tourism accelerator had started accepting applications. But I never guessed that more than 500 would be sent in – from 47 countries (nearly a quarter of all the countries in the world!) on five continents (all bar Antarctica!). And looking through them I realized just how much potential there is in the tourism industry – so many ideas, and so many great startups and existing projects. There were no geographical restrictions for applications: they could have – and did – come from anywhere on the planet, but they had to describe tourism ideas that could either tap the potential of Russian tourism or be applied in Russia. We sifted through all the applications to pick a top-10 very best ideas, and those 10 entered the accelerator program.

And for two weeks the 10 projects took part in online master classes and lectures. Each team had a series of specially tailored consultations with mentors. Leading industry figures shared with participants their experiences and know-how for building up a successful business. Mentors included: Vikas Bhola, regional director of Booking.com; Gemma Rubio, founder of Define the Fine; Vadim Mamontov, general director of Russia Discovery; and other industry professionals. And over those two weeks the participants also polished their presentations, which they then gave to the jury, which I was on.

Last week the finalists gave their presentations and answered our questions in the final demo-day of the accelerator. Out of those, we chose three winners, to which were awarded prizes from our partners. Let me tell you a bit about each of them…

First place was taken by 360 Stories. It’s a mobile augmented reality app with a live guide. They say their mission is to ‘modernize the traditional touring experience by powering interactive live tours using real-time guides’. With 360 Stories folks can now remotely roam their favorite cities and attractions by signing up for a personalized touring experience with a real-time local guide.

Btw: 360 Stories nearly lost – by oversleeping and not turning up! Its presentation was given at 05:30 local time – New York. Given such an early rise, Mr. 360 Stories slept in, despite having set his alarm. He wakes up eventually, and calls the organizers to ask why he had 20 missed calls on his phone. They were all to tell him he’d won, and ask – ‘where are you?!’

Read on…

2017: Leonardo, Fibonacci and Fermat Numbers: It’s Not So Complicated.

In my previous post we had a math competition. Let me remind you of the task:

Using +, -, x, ÷ and (), make the row of numbers from 10 to 1 equal 2017.

That was an easy task, which got more complicated.

How about 9 to 1 with arithmetic equalling 2017? 8 to 1? 7 to 1? And down to just 1?

Before I could say ‘What January blues when you’ve got arithmetic in your life!?!’ I had answers from people in our fan club streaming in! And some of them (remember, there are different possibilities to get the same answer of 2017) were so wonderfully interesting, while others were so interestingly not-quite-elegant enough, that, well, I just had to share some of them with you…

Read on: A real math indulgent…

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2017: Prime Numbers, Factorials, Primorials, Derangements: It’s Complicated.

As many will already know, the number 2017 is a prime number; that is, it can be divided without a remainder only by itself and 1. Must say, the theory of prime numbers is a wholly interesting one and an extremely useful one too, as any cryptographer will tell you :).

But today I’ll be writing about something different. See, based on the fact that 2017 is prime – or ‘simple’ – many, myself included, are anticipating a simple, straightforward and calm year 2017, especially since 2016 was a bit of a rotter. Let me show you why.

Like I said, prime numbers are those that can only be divided by themselves and 1 without leaving a remainder. Non-prime numbers are called composite numbers, incidentally.

Turns out that 2016 is not only a composite number but a very composite number! It has a whole eight divisors. Grab a calculator your smartphone and test it for yourself:
2016 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 3 * 3 * 7

Whoah! Even the quantity of divisors is anything but simple, since 8 = 2 * 2 * 2.

So what about other years? Was 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, a ‘prime’ year, for example? No, it wasn’t. 1917 = 3 * 3 * 3 * 71. Just four divisors, but they’re kinda poignant – and prophetic of nothing much good.

So what about other very prime/simple years, and other very non-prime/non-simple ones? Ok, let’s narrow this down a bit to 1980 through present day…

Prime/simple years:
1987
1993
1997
1999
2003
2011

And in the near future there are a few more prime/simples:
2027
2029

(eek, that’s a lot of non-simple years until then)

The most non-prime/non-simple years were:
1984 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 31 (seven divisors)
2000 = 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 5 * 5 * 5   (also seven)

There were six divisors in 1980, and there’ll be six in 2025. All other years can be called semi-prime/semi-simple.

But I digress…

Now, in the popular British mathematical journal The Guardian :), readers were recently teased with a… brain teaser. In the blanks between the sequence of figures 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 you need to add arithmetic symbols (+, -, x, ÷, (),) – as many as you like – so as to get the number (year) 2017.

For example, if you add arithmetic signs as follows you get 817:
10 * 9 * (8 + 7 – 6) * (5 – 4) + 3 * 2 + 1 = 817

But how do you add arithmetic to get 2017?
10?9?8?7?6?5?4?3?2?1 = 2017

Come on, have a go!

As for me, in nine minutes I got the equation to equal 2017 by kinda wonky arithmetic (I made the ‘3’ and ‘2’ = ’32’!); then, in around 15 or 20 minutes I got the answer in a proper way without bending the rules. I say ‘a’ way: there are different ways of getting to 2017!

So, tried it yet?

Ok, let’s make it harder: Now take away the 10:
9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 = 2017

Read on: How to make 2017 out of 1?…

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