A book called You Can Count on Monsters, by Richard Evan Schwartz, is designed for children but might also be frighteningly productive for adults to read. Schwartz is a math professor at Brown University. It’s about numbers and the numbers that compose them. And if that sentence is a little scary, try dipping into the […]
Tag: math
For large families of Artin-Tits groups
This week’s recommended algebraic geometry paper is: Quasi-projectivity, Artin-Tits Groups, and Pencil Maps Authors: Enrique Artal Bartolo, Jose Ignacio Cogolludo-Agustin, Daniel Matei, arXiv:1005.5225v1 (Submitted on 28 May 2010) Abstract: We consider the problem of deciding if a group is the fundamental group of a smooth connected complex quasi-projective (or projective) variety using Alexander-based invariants. In […]
Magazine: Mathematicians & Bears issue
The special Mathematicians & Bears issue (vol. 17, no. 3) of the magazine (the Annals of Improbable Research) is now online. It’s got lots about heads and lots about mathematicians and their problems, and about bears, and much more. The pleasing-paper version was mailed to subscribers a while ago. Click on the magazine cover (below) to […]
Vi Hart’s mathematical doodling
Vi Hart has much to commend her. This is one of her several videos about mathematical doodling, in this case about binary trees, a subject which until this moment may somehow have escaped your eager attention: BONUS: Her father, George W. Hart, likes to play with his food. So does Vi.