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mathematics

  1. Gord_in_Toronto

    Telescope Conjecture Disproved (Mathematics)

    If you are interested in Homotopy. An Old Conjecture Falls, Making Spheres a Lot More Complicated Honestly worth a read. Mathematical topology marches on.
  2. catsmate

    Today is not Hamilton's day.

    Today is the 170th anniversary of William Rowan Hamilton's conceptualisation of quaternions and act of public vandalism. i2 = j2 = k2 = ijk = −1 I have sympathy for anyone making the pilgrimage today, it's bucketing down in Dublin. However as Ada Lovelace is more in fashion so it's Ada...
  3. Crossbow

    Largest Prime Number Discovered

    Just in case anyone is curious, the largest known Prime Number is now: 257,885,161 - 1 http://news.yahoo.com/largest-prime-number-discovered-165757465.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CZGXBJRjzUAsFvQtDMD Largest Prime Number Discovered The largest prime number yet has been discovered — and it's 17,425,170...
  4. Badly Shaved Monkey

    "Finite but unbounded"

    I just read a passage in a book contrasting something that is infinite with something that is finite but unbounded. I submit myself to the hilarity of my peers: isn't unbounded the same as infinite, so "finite but unbounded" is an oxymoron? Thanks.
  5. H

    Merged No more algebra?

    As usual, students have trouble learning something? Remove the requirement that they learn it. Or, at least try! We have already eliminated geography, elementary school history, spelling, grammar, foreign languages, art, music, even penmanship for heavens's sake. I don't know what else...
  6. psionl0

    How much mathematics do we need today?

    Recently, it has been asked, Is Higher-Level Math needed for everyone? Clearly the answer is no. However, it occurs to me that a more appropriate question would be, "what is the minimum amount of mathematics we need to get by today?" Clearly we need to be able to do some financial calculations...
  7. Molinaro

    Ramanujan's beastly expressions for pi

    $$ \frac{1}{\pi} = \sqrt{8} \sum_ {n=0}^{\infty} \frac{(1103+26390n)(2n-1)!!(4n-1)!! } { (99^{4n+2})(32^{n})(n!)^{3} } $$ and $$ \frac{1}{\pi} = \frac{2\sqrt{2}}{9801} \sum_ {k=0}^{\infty} \frac{(4k)!(1103+26390k)} {(k!)^{4}(396^{4k})} $$ These equations never cease to amaze me. At first...
  8. sophia8

    Mathematics has a real moral basis?

    This is what a guy called Colin Hannaford is claiming. He has a website, but frankly, the text is too small and densely-packed for me to read comfortably. (Also, TL:DR) His qualifications are impressive, but he's been putting a series of ads in Private Eye, the latest of which states: "I am a...
  9. S

    Is the axiom of choice useful?

    This was brought up in another thread. Here is a post by W.D.Clinger. Wikipedia has a list of equivalent statements and theorems that follow from ZF+AC. I've heard of Tychonoff's theorem being important, but I've never really known why. The law of trichotomy for cardinal numbers and the...
  10. C

    Ideas for math/algorithms writing for young people

    I love what I do research on (mostly developing new algorithms for challenging problems, especially some in graph theory). I've slowly writing up the results of 25 years of research and wanting to find some interesting ways of sharing it. I've also wanted to write an invitation to math...
  11. CaveDave

    Does Pi terminate or never?

    An acquaintance just told me that he had seen a newspaper article claiming an "ending to Pi had been discovered".:jaw-dropp Now, as I have always understood it, Pi is a transcendental number that by definition can NEVER terminate. It, and others in that class, continue endlessly, adding...
  12. PixyMisa

    Great Theorems of Mathematics

    Just wondered what people consider the coolest theorems in mathematics. They may be the ones that shook up the field, or the ones that made a complex question simple. I'll nominate Godel's incompleteness theorem* for the first category, and Cantor's diagonalisation argument for the second...
  13. Just thinking

    When it comes to math ...

    Why is it that whenever it comes to mathematics (including basic arithmetic and/or geometry) so many folks, including highly skilled individuals in their fields, fail so miserably? Just watch any game show or listen to any radio talk show (or just your average Joe).
  14. W

    Pi and Irrational Numbers

    Pi is an irrational number, meaning it never ends. It's infinitely long, therefore it must contain every possible combination of numbers an infinite amount of times. Does this mean pi contains every piece of software (in 0's and 1's) ever written? And if we could reduce genetic code to numbers...
  15. C

    Mathematics self-study resources?

    My interest in Maths has been re-awoken* after lying dormant for around thirty years and I'm looking for cheap (free!) resources to re-educate myself. One of the problems I have is that I'm not sure where to start, having probably forgotten a lot of what I once knew about the subject. Maybe some...
  16. A

    Was my logic flawed?

    So at my workplace about a month ago they had me calculate an hourly read to see if we were either ahead, even, or behind in total sales. So one day my manager wanted me to calculate the hourly read since no one bothered to do it and we were about halfway through the new hour. She also asked me...
  17. Mojo

    Negative numbers baffle scratchcard buyers.

    'Cool Cash' card confusion. :hb:
  18. Niobe

    The G-Ant ambush: How much merit does this have?

    A couple of days ago I noticed a weird advert in a newspaper promoting the following website: http://www.g-ant-ambush.com/ It gave me serious woo vibes (since the solution wasn't posted at the time) but they have some info up there now. Then today I read a background piece, with the people...
  19. Brown

    Combatting Sleeplessness With Mathematics

    Randi wrote: Good grief, I do much the same thing! One of my favorite exercises is to compute Pythagorean triples or pseudo-Pythagorean triples (in which one if the sides is irrational but its square is an integer). Further, I break numbers into their factors. I also square numbers and do...
  20. andyandy

    Win £500 by proving you're cleverer than a dumb chemistry student!

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6589301.stm seems a bit of a silly story really....but thought people might enjoy the challenge...
  21. neutrino_cannon

    How much of the increase in life expectency is illusory?

    I have a friend who is very into gerentology. They were informing, breathlessly of how much longer people would be expected to live, and how much of a difference that will cause to society because as a result of the baby boomers, an unprecedented percent of the population will be old. A key...
  22. andyandy

    Integration

    maths question time again :) Here we are given the following.... I_{n,p} = $$\int_{0}^{1} {x^p}{(1-x)^n} dx $$ p\ge 0, n\ge 0 and told to 1) Show that I_{n,p} = I_{p,n} 2) prove that, for p\ge 1, {(n+1)}I_{p,n} = {p}I_{p-1,n+1} 2II) and also that p\ge 1, {(p+n+1)}I_{p,n} =...
  23. infornography

    Teaching adults mathematics

    I am an instructor in a small trade school in the Dallas area. I teach several technical certifications. Most of these require knowledge based learning (ie the type of learning that can be done using just rote memorization). Largely, the students who can grasp cognitive learning will succeed...
  24. B

    What are the mathematics of this "dynamic yin yang" geometry?

    Anyone have a particularly mathematically elegant way to describe the dynamic "yin yang"-like geometry diagram coded in java per http://winstone.us/DynamicYinYangGeometry.htm ?
  25. Ladewig

    Mathematics: Game Theory: Dollar Bill Auction. Anyone ever done one?

    While reading a book about John VonNeumann, I came across a strange game called the Dollar Bill Auction. There are two rules. 1) Bidding is perfomed as in a regular auction, i.e. all bids must be higher than previous bids, once bidding has stopped the high bidder pays the highest bid to...
  26. Rolfe

    "Bad Mathematics" web site?

    I remember a link from here to a web site devoted to reporting and mocking examples of bad maths and/or statistis in journalism and other published work. I now need that site again, and can't find it. Google is little help, as there seems to be a band called "Bad Mathematics"! Does anyone...
  27. K

    Notions of Feminism, Science and Mathematics.

    From another thread: How many of us truly understand what the notion of 'feminism' means and what female contribution to the world has brought us and how much is truly overlooked by those who limit themselves to literary rather than scientific figures? I started this because I am aware that...
  28. J

    Maths Questions- absolute errors

    From http://www.swan.ac.uk/education/pgcemaths/mk/tests/alev_11-16.html 14. 1. (a) If x = 5.37 and y = 4.291 (both numbers given correct to the number of decimal places shown). (i) write down the absolute errors in x and y. (ii) evaluate xy giving your answer in the form N + , where is...
  29. D

    mathematics paper predicts telepathy?

    Apologies to those without access to this paper. I'm unsure about the copyright rules here so I'll tentatively quote this small passage from: " E.A. Novikov. Modeling of consciousness. Chaos, Solitons and Fractals (article in press)"...
  30. a_unique_person

    Mathematics of Traffic

    When I was working on a very large computer project once, and it was way over budget and late, (not all due to me, I can assure you, in case you were wondering), I asked my manager if it was worth computerising all this stuff, if a simple manual, or semi automated system mightn't be better. He...

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