$\text{Hello Brilliant. From the moderators to you: Happy 2016!}$

The holidays have come and gone and we’ve had our fill of food and cheer. I hope you have prepared your new year’s resolutions (to solve more Brilliant problems of course), but before we do that, here is our list of exciting features and posts from the end of the year.

$\large \mathbf{ NEW} \ \ \ \mathbf{ FEATURES } \ \ \ \mathbf{ TO } \ \ \ \mathbf{ BE } \ \ \ \mathbf{ EXCITED } \ \ \ \mathbf{ ABOUT }$

The Brilliant community is always undergoing awe-inspiring growth. These new features are meant to foster a wonderful experience on Brilliant. Excited to hear about what's in the spotlight this month? Okay, here we go:

1. Good Looks to Publish Page

The Publish Page has been renewed with this new and simple design so users will find it much easier to post problems and list problems in their proper topics now.

2. Quizzes Improvement Section

You may have noticed the challenge quizzes on Brilliant, but not all of them are finished. If you submit a good problem for one of those topics, Brilliant may add it to one of their challenge quizzes and your problem will forever be immortalized! You can check out the list of the chapters out there to contribute the problems and help the Brilliant having more challenge quizzes for you to practice on.

3. Towards Wiki Improvements

Thanks to our weekend wiki parties and the endless support of the community, we have been able to complete a large number of wikis. The only thing left to do is add examples. You can check out the list of wikis that need examples and help there. Thanks!

$\large \mathbf{ POSTS } \ \ \ \mathbf{ THE } \ \ \ \mathbf{ COMMUNITY } \ \ \ \mathbf{ LOVED }$

From problems to solutions, from notes to wikis, these are the posts that were highly appreciated by the whole community. Here's your chance to have a look at what captured our attention for the past month:

1. $\textbf{Popular Note: }$ RMO 2015 (Rajasthan Region) - Discussion} Filled with great solutions and inspiring mathematical discussion, this note received over 100 comments!

2. $\textbf{Featured Member: }$ Ahaan Rungta As a freshman at MIT, he has joined many clubs on campus, including being an officer for the Harvard-MIT Math Tournament.

3. $\textbf{Featured Member: }$ Isaac Buckley This Brilliant member just started his undergraduate degree at University of Cambridge where he plans to continue dreaming up the answers to problems in the shower.

4. $\textbf{Mathematical Olympiad: }$ Brilliant Inequality Contest Moderator and pillar of the Brilliant community Sharky Kesa is at it again. This time he’s concocted the first ever Brilliant Inequality Contest. Despite the contest being on inequality, each participant was quite equally matched. Here’s hoping for another season soon.

5. There are always so many problems to choose from when we make our selection for problems of the month and we wish we could list 20 instead of just 2. But our choices this month were Nought for a Thought, a not too scary problem, but it might make your head spin if you’re not sure about dividing by 0 (or is it 0!). A much harder, mind-blowing problem is How Many Rounds Will I Last? with a probabilistic take on video games. We hope that these problems challenge and inspire you!

$\large \mathbf{ WHO } \ \ \ \mathbf{ TO } \ \ \ \mathbf{ FOLLOW }$

Here's the long-awaited WhoToFollow list showing off the dazzling members of our community. I'm pleased to introduce you to the wonderful people who are constantly helping to build the community. Here are the names, in no particular order:

$\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad$ Aareyan Manzoor $\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad\quad \quad$ Anish Harsha

$\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad$ Prasun Biswas $\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad\quad \quad \quad$ Angela Fajardo

$\quad \quad \quad \quad \quad \quad$ Michael Ng

Be sure to hit the button to keep yourself updated with the amazing problems and notes posted by them.

Don't forget, you can always join our Slack chat if you want to talk with our community members. Introduce yourself, share problems, have discussions, join the wiki collaboration parties too. Most of all, have fun!

A bartender asks, “What would you like to drink sir?”

Thirty seconds later, a tachyon walks in. (You might have to ask your physics friends why this is funny.)

#Moderation

Note by Trevor Arashiro
5 years, 3 months ago

This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments should further the discussion of math and science.

When posting on Brilliant:

• Use the emojis to react to an explanation, whether you're congratulating a job well done , or just really confused .
• Ask specific questions about the challenge or the steps in somebody's explanation. Well-posed questions can add a lot to the discussion, but posting "I don't understand!" doesn't help anyone.
• Try to contribute something new to the discussion, whether it is an extension, generalization or other idea related to the challenge.

MarkdownAppears as
*italics* or _italics_ italics
**bold** or __bold__ bold
- bulleted- list
• bulleted
• list
1. numbered2. list
1. numbered
2. list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
paragraph 1paragraph 2

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

[example link](https://brilliant.org)example link
> This is a quote
This is a quote
    # I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"
# I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"
MathAppears as
Remember to wrap math in $$ ... $$ or $ ... $ to ensure proper formatting.
2 \times 3 $2 \times 3$
2^{34} $2^{34}$
a_{i-1} $a_{i-1}$
\frac{2}{3} $\frac{2}{3}$
\sqrt{2} $\sqrt{2}$
\sum_{i=1}^3 $\sum_{i=1}^3$
\sin \theta $\sin \theta$
\boxed{123} $\boxed{123}$

Sort by:

Wow ! I am in ' Who to follow ' list ! Thank you friends .

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Hahaha! Nice joke, I was ROFL just after I read it.

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Wonderful!

- 5 years, 3 months ago

thanks for "who to follow" ing me. i didnt understand the joke though.... nicely written @Trevor Arashiro!

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Well can someone please explain that physics joke?Thanks!

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Tachyons are hypothetical particles that can travel faster than the speed of light, and thus would travel backwards in time. Thus the joke makes sense only when read from bottom to top.

Since it's faster than light you wouldn't be able to see a tachyon approaching; you would, though, see two versions of it after it has passed by, one departing and one "arriving", (although actually moving backwards). I think that's where Michael's extension of the joke comes in. Apparently they have complex-valued mass; perhaps another joke could be made from that hypothetical factoid. :)

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Mind=Blown,

- 5 years, 2 months ago

It gets funnier when the tachyon receives money from the bartender before he has his drink.

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Hahaaahah..gr8! :D

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Tachyon "Walks" in. :'D

- 5 years, 3 months ago

Nicely written!

- 5 years, 3 months ago

You can thank Andrew and Sandeep for that. They added the meat to this, all I really did was copy paste a bunch of stuff

- 5 years, 3 months ago