Sub shoot!

This column is a place for those bits of contagious mathematics that travel from person to person in the community, because they are so elegant, suprising, or appealing that one has an urge to pass them on. Contributions are most welcome.     

Exceedingly deranging!

This paper studies the excedance distribution on derangements and gives its generating function. It also studies the excedance distribution on the set of even derangements and the set of odd derangements and proves combinatorially an unexpected relation between the number of odd and the number of even derangements having a given number of excedances.     

Zerlegen bringt Segen!

Zusammenfassung. Ausgehend von der unterrichtlichen Behandlung einer einfachen Fragestellung am Quadrat samt deren Variation werden ebenfalls elementare, aber nicht durchweg triviale Zerlegungsprobleme am Würfel behandelt. Da deren Lösung sich im wechselseitig fördernden Gedankenaustausch der beiden Autoren ergab, stellen diese neben den Resultaten auch den zu ihnen fuhrenden Erkenntnisprozeß dar und kommentieren ihn didaktisch.Eingegangen am 26. April 2004     

Factoring Effectiveness Factors!

It has previously been suggested that the effectiveness of strategic planning systems may be characterized in terms of a multi-attribute framework. This paper explores the possibility of reducing the postulated set of attributes to an ‘irreducible core’ by means of a factor analysis. In addition, the data set used in this analysis was explored to determine whether, in terms of their planning effectiveness, the organizations in the sample formed natural subgroups. Some interesting questions are generated by the analysis.