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“God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world…”*
email readers, click here for video From Yann Pineill & Nicolas Lefaucheux at Parachutes.tv, “Beauty of Mathematics.” * Paul Dirac “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but...
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“The future ain’t what it used to be….”*
Just over a hundred years ago, in 1910, the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette in Iowa published a list of advances and innovations that they believed would appear during the century, a fascinating list of...
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Why did 5 eat 6?…
For over two decades, The Simpsons has been one of the best written and most entertaining programs on television. Simon Singh believes that he’s discovered the series’ secret sauce: it’s written by...
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“Arithmetic! Algebra! Geometry! Grandiose trinity! Luminous triangle! Whoever...
In 1915, Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński described what’s now known as “the Sierpinski triangle” in 1915. He was explicating the properties of a pattern that had appeared in the 13th-century...
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“It isn’t that they cannot see the solution. It is that they cannot see the...
email readers click here for video From Zogg from Betelgeuse , “Mathematics: Measuring x Laziness²,” the latest entry in the Earthlings 101 series– a beginner’s guide for alien visitors. * G.K....
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“Who questions much, shall learn much”*…
From the practical and concrete (“How does WiFi work?”) to the philosophical (“How am I able to ask this question?”), explanations for humans… For example, “What does math not explain?” Math...
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“Everyone’s quick to blame the alien”*…
In August of 1977, volunteer astronomer Jerry Ehman reviewed readings from Ohio State’s Big Ear Radio Observatory (that’s a scan, above, of Ehman’s notations on the print-out he was assessing)… He...
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“You can’t criticize geometry. It’s never wrong.”*…
In the world of mathematical tiling, news doesn’t come bigger than this. In the world of bathroom tiling – I bet they’re interested too. If you can cover a flat surface using only identical copies...
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“Math is sometimes called the science of patterns”*…
email readers click here for video From Katie Steckles, help for the Holidays… Special Holiday bonus: the story behind those massive bows that bedeck cars given as Holiday presents. * Ronald Graham...
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“Time is the longest distance between two places”*…
In quantum mechanics, time is universal and absolute; its steady ticks dictate the evolving entanglements between particles. But in general relativity (Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity), time is...
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“Nature is pleased with simplicity”*…
As Clare Booth Luce once said, sometimes “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”… … The uniformity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) tells us that, at its birth, ‘the Universe has turned...
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“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before...
Imaginary numbers were long dismissed as mathematical “bookkeeping.” But now, as Karmela Padavic-Callaghan explains, physicists are proving that they describe the hidden shape of nature… Many science...
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“Advantage! What is advantage?”*…
Pradeep Mutalik unpacks the magic and math of how to win games when your opponent goes first… Most games that pit two players or teams against each other require one of them to make the first play....
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“Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one”*…
… or, as Sheon Han explains, maybe not… Imagine you had some useful knowledge — maybe a secret recipe, or the key to a cipher. Could you prove to a friend that you had that knowledge, without...
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“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder...
Lynn Hunt on Alexis de Tocqueville, who left France to study the American prison system and returned with the material that would become Democracy in America… Alexis de Tocqueville was a study in...
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“Mathematics has not a foot to stand on which is not purely metaphysical”*…
Battle of Maida 1806, part of the the invasion and occupation of Naples by Napoleon’s French Empire (source) Lest we forget… A forgotten episode in French-occupied Naples in the years around 1800—just...
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“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it...
The Pythagoreans believed that the motions of the heavenly bodies, with just the right ratios of their distances from a central fire, made pleasant music — a concept that evolved into the “music of...
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“A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass”*…
Holes. Caity Weaver wonders about them: What is a hole? A hole is a portion of something where something is not. Beyond that, holes are slippery. (As a concept — only some in reality.) Is a hole...
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“Life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of...
How hard is it to prove that problems are hard to solve? Meta-complexity theorists have been asking questions like this for decades. And as Ben Brubaker explains, a string of recent results has...
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“To understand anything, you just need to understand the little bits”*…
Oscar Schwartz begs to differ. Here, excerpts from his provocative critique of TED Talks… Bill Gates wheels a hefty metal barrel out onto a stage. He carefully places it down and then faces the...
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