Journal of Integer Sequences, Vol. 7 (2004), Article 04.1.7

Zeroing the Baseball Indicator and the Chirality of Triples


Christopher S. Simons and Marcus Wright
Department of Mathematics
Rowan University
Glassboro, NJ 08028
USA

Abstract: Starting with a common baseball umpire indicator, we consider the zeroing number for two-wheel indicators with states (a,b) and three-wheel indicators with states (a,b,c). Elementary number theory yields formulae for the zeroing number. The solution in the three-wheel case involves a curiously nontrivial minimization problem whose solution determines the chirality of the ordered triple (a,b,c) of pairwise relatively prime numbers. We prove that chirality is in fact an invariant of the unordered triple {a,b,c }. We also show that the chirality of Fibonacci triples alternates between 1 and 2.

Full version:  pdf,    dvi,    ps,    latex    

Received August 20 2003; revised version received February 26 2004. Published in Journal of Integer Sequences March 12 2004.

Return to Journal of Integer Sequences home page