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On Blockade – student

student from thus spake a.k.

Recall that the Baron's game is comprised of taking turns to place dominoes on a six by six grid of squares with each domino covering a pair of squares. At no turn was a player allowed to place a domino such that it created an oddly-numbered region of empty squares and Sir R----- was to be victorious if, at the end of play, the lines running between the ranks and files of the board were each and every one straddled by at least one domino.
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Further On Natural Analogarithms – student

student from thus spake a.k.

My fellow students and I have of late been thinking upon an equivalence between the roots of rational numbers and an infinite dimensional rational vector space, which we have named ℓ-space, that we discovered whilst defining analogues of logarithms that were expressed purely in terms of rationals.
We were particularly intrigued by the possibility of defining functions of such numbers by applying linear algebra operations to their associated vectors, which we began with a brief consideration of that given by their magnitudes. We have subsequently spent some time further exploring its properties and it is upon our findings that I shall now report.
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On Quaker’s Dozen – student

student from thus spake a.k.

The Baron's latest wager set Sir R----- the task of rolling a higher score with two dice than the Baron should with one twelve sided die, giving him a prize of the difference between them should he have done so. Sir R-----'s first roll of the dice would cost him two coins and twelve cents and he could elect to roll them again as many times as he desired for a further cost of one coin and twelve cents each time, after which the Baron would roll his.
The simplest way to reckon the fairness of this wager is to re-frame its terms; to wit, that Sir R----- should pay the Baron one coin to play and thereafter one coin and twelve cents for each roll of his dice, including the first. The consequence of this is that before each roll of the dice Sir R----- could have expected to receive the same bounty, provided that he wrote off any losses that he had made beforehand.
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On Natural Analogarithms – student

student from thus spake a.k.

Last year my fellow students and I spent a goodly portion of our free time considering the similarities of the relationships between sequences and series and those between derivatives and integrals. During the course of our investigations we deduced a sequence form of the exponential function ex, which stands alone in satisfying the equations

    D f = f
  f(0) = 1

where D is the differential operator, producing the derivative of the function to which it is applied.
This set us to wondering whether or not we might endeavour to find a discrete analogue of its inverse, the natural logarithm ln x, albeit in the sense of being expressed in terms of integers rather than being defined by equations involving sequences and series.
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On Lucky Sevens – student

student from thus spake a.k.

The Baron's most recent game consisted of a race to complete a trick of four sevens, with the Baron dealing cards from a pristine deck, running from Ace to King once in each suit, and Sir R----- dealing from a well shuffled deck. As soon as either player held such a trick the game concluded and a prize was taken, eleven coins for the Baron if he should have four sevens and nine for Sir R----- otherwise.
The key to reckoning the equity of the wager is to note that it is unchanged should the Baron and Sir R----- take turns dealing out the rest of their cards one by one after the prize has been taken.
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Finally On A Calculus Of Differences – student

student from thus spake a.k.

My fellow students and I have spent much of our spare time this past year investigating the similarities between the calculus of functions and that of sequences, which we have defined for a sequence sn with the differential operator

  Δ sn = sn - sn-1

and the integral operator
  n
  Δ-1 sn = Σ si
  i = 1
where Σ is the summation sign, adopting the convention that terms with non-positive indices equate to zero.

We have thus far discovered how to differentiate and integrate monomial sequences, found product and quotient rules for differentiation, a rule of integration by parts and figured solutions to some familiar-looking differential equations, all of which bear a striking resemblance to their counterparts for functions. To conclude our investigation, we decided to try to find an analogue of Taylor's theorem for sequences.
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On Share And Share Alike – student

student from thus spake a.k.

When last they met, the Baron challenged Sir R----- to a wager in which, for a price of three coins and fifty cents, he would make a pile of two coins upon the table. Sir R----- was then to cast a four sided die and the Baron would add to that pile coins numbering that upon which it settled. The Baron would then make of it as many piles of equal numbers of no fewer than two coins as he could muster and take back all but one of them for his purse. After doing so some sixteen times, Sir R----- was to have as his prize the remaining pile of coins.
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Further Still On A Calculus Of Differences – student

student from thus spake a.k.

For some time now my fellow students and I have been whiling away our spare time considering the similarities of the relationships between sequences and series and those between the derivatives and integrals of functions. Having defined differential and integral operators for a sequence sn with

  Δ sn = sn - sn-1

and
  n
  Δ-1 sn = Σ si
  i = 1
where Σ is the summation sign, we found analogues for the product rule, the quotient rule and the rule of integration by parts, as well as formulae for the derivatives and integrals of monomial sequences, being those whose terms are non-negative integer powers of their indices, and higher order, or repeated, derivatives and integrals in general.

We have since spent some time considering how we might solve equations relating sequences to their derivatives, known as differential equations when involving functions, and it is upon our findings that I shall now report.
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On Divisions – student

student from thus spake a.k.

The Baron's game most recent game consisted of a series of some six wagers upon the toss of an unfair coin that turned up one side nine times out of twenty and the other eleven times out of twenty at a cost of one fifth part of a coin. Sir R----- was to wager three coins from his purse upon the outcome of each toss, freely divided between heads and tails, and was to return to it twice the value he wagered correctly.

Clearly, our first task in reckoning the fairness of this game is to figure Sir R-----'s optimal strategy for placing his coins. To do this we shall need to know his expected winnings in any given round for any given placement of his coins.