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I’m not sure I have any comment for this, other than to say how pleased I am that puns work just as well in math.
Via Vincent Knight
The bizarre mathematical conundrum of Ulam’s Spiral [Maths]
If there’s anything we learn from math teachers and the Da Vinci Code, it’s that prime numbers are magic. They can do anything, and be anywhere. Including a doodle on a math paper.
In the 1960s, a gentleman known as Stanislaw Ulam was making his way th… Continue reading
Posted in math, syndicated
Tagged Da Vinci Code, Maths, prime numbers, science, syndicated, Top, Ulam's spiral
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Did Futurama get the Banach-Tarski Paradox right? [Maths]
The Banach-Tarski Dupla-Shrinker recently made an appearance on an episode of Futurama. Using it, Bender got to make two, slightly smaller, copies of himself. The smaller Benders are why they added the ‘shrinker’ part of the name. The actual Banach-Tar… Continue reading
Posted in math, syndicated, tv
Tagged Banach-tarski paradox, Futurama, mathematics, Maths, science, syndicated, Top
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James Gleick’s tour-de-force: The Information, a natural history of information theory
I’ve just finished reading The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, James Gleick’s tour-de-force history of information theory. I read Freeman Dyson’s early review of The Information with interest earlier in the month, and fell upon the book and… Continue reading
Posted in culture, history, math, syndicated
Tagged book, featured, informationtheory, lexicography, medialiteracy, Physics, Reviews, syndicated, webtheory, wikipedia
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No P = NP Proof After All
00_NOP writes "Internet commerce seems safe for now as Russian computer scientist Vladimir Romanov has conceded that his previously published solution to the '3 SAT' problem of boolean algebra does not work. If his solution did work it wou… Continue reading
Alan Turing’s Patterns in Nature, and Beyond
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Posted in math, syndicated
Tagged alan turing, biology, Chemistry, Complexity, patterns, space, syndicated
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An important Venn Diagram to keep in mind this weekend [Sci Fashion]
What are you going to wear to the disco in the hollowed-out asteroid at the top of the space elevator? It’s going to be awesome because on Saturday nights they play weird old music from the 1970s. When you get to Club Counterweight, surely you’ll want… Continue reading
Posted in math, syndicated
Tagged sci fashion, snorg tees, syndicated, T-shirts, Top, venn diagram
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No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl | Tau Day, 2010
(via Delicious/tsangal)
Sage: Open Source Mathematics Software
Sage is a free open-source mathematics software system licensed under the GPL. It combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface. Continue reading
Posted in math, programming, syndicated
Tagged bookmark, mathematics, opensource, oss, science, software, syndicated, tools
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Are you seeing patterns in numbers everywhere? You’re not crazy – it’s Benford’s Law. [Spooky Science]
Pick any large set of random data you like. Look at the first digit of all the numbers. You’re going to see a lot of ones. It’s not just a coincidence. It’s the law.
Benford’s Law was discovered by Simon Newcomb, who was thumbing through a book of loga… Continue reading
Posted in math, syndicated
Tagged Accounting, Fb, Fraud, science, Spooky science, syndicated, tweet, Weird
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Use Benford’s Law to Catch (or Pull Off) Fake Numbers [Numbers]
How can accountants, election inspectors, and academic reviewers know at a glance that your numbers are bunk? They use Benford’s Law, which suggests number distribution is less random than expected. Ro… Continue reading
Posted in math, syndicated
Tagged Cheating, Evil week, Good versus evil, Numbers, probability, Psychology, syndicated, Taxes, Top
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Physicists Say Graphene Could Create Mass
eldavojohn writes “Graphene has gotten a lot of press lately. The Nobel prize-winning, fastest-spinning, nanobubble-enhanced silicon replacement is theorized to have a new, more outlandish property. As reported by Technology Review’s Physics Blog, grap… Continue reading
Fermilab To Test Holographic Universe Theory
eldavojohn writes “Scientists at Fermilab have decided that it’s high time they build a ‘holometer’ to test the smoothness of space-time. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking have proposed that space-time is not smooth but it’s been a lot of mat… Continue reading
Possible Issues With the P != NP Proof
An anonymous reader writes “We previously discussed news that Vinay Deolalikar, a Principal Research Scientist at HP Labs, wrote a paper that claimed to prove P is not equal to NP. Dick Lipton, a Professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech, analyzed … Continue reading
The Tuesday Birthday Problem
An anonymous reader sends in a mathematical puzzle introduced at the recent Gathering 4 Gardner, a convention of mathematicians, magicians, and puzzle enthusiasts held biannually in Atlanta. The Tuesday Birthday Problem is simply stated, but tends to m… Continue reading
Binary Beat
Listen to the beat of a binary counter! Binary Beat from Niklas Roy on Vimeo. This is an experiment, where I count one byte up – from 00000000 to 11111111. Decimal spoken, this is from 0 to 255. I have … Continue reading
Posted in audio, computers, math, programming
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Book: The Poincaré Conjecture
The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe by Donal O’Shea. Walker & Company, 2007. In The Poincaré Conjecture, Donal O’Shea explains a conjecture in topology from 1904 that had remained unsolved for nearly a century. Aside … Continue reading
Posted in books, math
Tagged books, cosmology, geometry, history, mathematics, topology
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Modelling the Sierpinski Triangle with Polymer Clay
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has an ingenious how-to on creating a clay model of a fractal known as a Sierpinski triangle. One of our favorite shapes is the Sierpinski triangle. In one sense, a mere mathematical abstraction, on the other, … Continue reading
Posted in diy, math
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Book: The Möbius Strip
The Möbius Strip: Dr. August Möbius’s Marvelous Band in Mathematics, Games, Literature, Art, Technology, and Cosmology by Clifford Pickover. Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006 As the title implies, The Möbius Strip explores the strange characteristics of Möbius strips and other related … Continue reading
Posted in books, math, science/nature
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William Wu’s Riddles
William Wu has quite a large collection of tech-interview style riddles and puzzles. This is an archive of problems I’ve been collecting since the Spring of 2002. They come from many places, including word of mouth, college courses, books, and … Continue reading
Posted in math, puzzles
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