In an essay called “The Root of Infinity: It’s Surreal!“, the ThatsMath blog writes about a dark side to the power of numbers. The Cantor mentioned here is George Cantor [pictured here], who pretty much created large subsets of certain branches of mathematics : … But the extended system was hugely controversial, and for good […]
Tag: mathematics
Explaining the Tootsie Pop Algorithm
Mark Huber and Sarah Schott prepared a lecture called “Using TPA [the Tootsie Pop Algorithm] for Monte Carlo integration.” The authors are at Claremont McKenna College and Duke University, respectively. You can see their presentation online, if you want to. The algorithm can be used to try to answer the [somewhat ill-defined] question: How many licks […]
Mathematics of Repulsive Behavior in an Exceptional Family
Mathematics sometimes is all about family. Here is one of those times: “Repulsive Behavior in an Exceptional Family,” Jeffrey Stopple [pictured here], arXiv:1108.6272, August 31, 2011. Stoppel, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, writes, using the royal “we”: “The existence of a Landau-Siegel zero leads to the Deuring-Heilbronn phenomenon, here appearing in the 1-level density in […]
Knitting Mathematics
The recent Improbable article : ‘Welcome to My Brain‘ profiled the work of Dr. Anne Beate Reinertsen PhD, whose paper ‘Welcome to My Brain’ explained the process of ‘Neuroknitting’ – in particular the knitting of Möbius Bands. In this respect the paper cites the work of Dr. Sarah-marie Belcastro (Research Associate at Smith College and a […]
Littlewood’s Law (of miracles-per-month)
Wikipedia describes Littlewood’s Law: Littlewood’s Law, or adage, states that an individual can expect to experience “miracles” at the rate of about one per month. The law was framed by Cambridge University Professor J. E. Littlewood, and published in a 1986 collection of his work, A Mathematician’s Miscellany. It seeks among other things to debunk one element of supposed supernatural phenomenology […]
On Vulgar Numbers
David Justice wrote a little essay about vulgar numbers, or at least about things related to vulgar numbers: we took to abstraction like — like a duck to water, like a kitteh to cheezeburger, like Donald Trump to a pile of manure. It was to some extent an end in itself… No sooner did we […]
Bankruptcy and Hell-o, Alabama
The most populous county in the American state of Alabama has just declared bankruptcy. This is an opportune time for mathematicians to revisit the calculations that led to the awarding of the 1994 Ig Nobel Prize for mathematics. That Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama [who have since re-named themselves], for […]
A loving, applied mathematical tribute across a generation
L. Mahadevan, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in physics for studying how sheets get wrinkled, wrote a loving tribute, a few months ago, to his teacher Joseph Keller [pictured here]. Keller is a two-time Ig Nobel Prize winner. The entire essay appears in SIAM News. Here are snippets: Joe Keller’s contributions to the […]
Hamburger moments for mathematicians
Two tasty studies, for mathematicians who enjoy this sort of thing: 1. “ON THE BACKWARD EXTENSION OF POSITIVE DEFINITE HAMBURGER MOMENT SEQUENCES,” Fred M. Wright, Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 7, 1956, pp. 413-22. 2. “An Extended Hamburger Moment Problem,” Olav Njåstad [pictured here], Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society (Series 2) (1985), 28 […]
How many tunes?
Ashley Hamer does some math to find out many different tunes could possibly be written, given how many notes there are on the music scale. She explains it in this 11-minute-line video, chock full of examples: Thanks to investigator Jennifer Ouellette for bringing this to our attention.