math
You are viewing stuff tagged with math.
You are viewing stuff tagged with math.
I was listening to This American Life’s most recent show “Family Physics”, about the application of physical laws to relationships. I didn’t hear much of the actual episode, but it caused my mind to wander off on a tangent beginning this way: your emotional range increases as you become older, more mature, more experienced. But, earlier in your life, you can not comprehend the depth of pain and joy you’ll experience in the future. So, at any point in your life, you think that your extremes of happiness or sadness are the limits of your emotional capacity. In fact, you think you are plumbing the depths of despair or scraping the ceiling of joy at a variety of discrete points in your life. What is actually happening is an increase in your emotional distance between happiness and sadness. Instead of representing this with physics, why not use math (specifically, y=0.5(x)*sin(x) )? Indeed, in mathematical terms these emotional points are signified by local minima or maxima of your emotional capacities. This idea can’t be new, but I was so excited about it I made a diagram explaining it.
The centuries-old struggle to play in tune, by Jan Swafford:
There have been some 150 tuning systems put forth over the centuries, none of them pure. There is no perfection, only varying tastes in corruption. If you want your fifths nicely in tune, the thirds can’t be; if you want pure thirds, you have to put up with impure fifths. And no scale on a keyboard, not even good old C major, can be perfectly in tune.
Recently, I’ve begun sending Katy emails entitled “Math News Today (MNT)” since I always seem to send her anything mathematical (mathemagical?) that I run across. This one, though, was too good to keep in private email. First off, the news: Tomas Rokicki has brought the moves required to solve a Rubik’s Cube down to just 25.
Bear with me on this: (kottke.org) is, apparently, the most popular post on kottke. It’s not actually written by Jason Kottke. I didn’t understand it when I first read it, almost exactly 8 years ago. Today, I think it makes sense.
An article entitled “Math Trek: The Grammy in Mathematics” from Science News Online explains how Jamie Howarth, with the help of mathematician Kevin Short, used an awesome technique to restore an old Woody Guthrie recording (emphasis mine):
You did it, Katy! Congrats on getting your Master’s in Mathematics (I don’t know if those words should be capitalized, but they seem important enough to be capitalized) by passing a ridiculously rigorous, stressful and difficult oral exam! I knew you could do it. Whether or not you decide to get your Ph.D., you’ll always be the best math solver that I know.
My sister Katy is closing in on oral exams, which are an important milestone on her way to math Ph.D. stardom! With the goal of encouraging her, I’ve excerpted sentences from a recent Computerworld article about celebrities with math majors:
Toilet seats down: a scientific and humorous analysis - It turns out that game theory, specifically Nash equilibrium, can be employed to analyze the situation of the toilet seat being left up or down. The author here, building on previous examinations (which were published in peer reviewed publications), addresses the “costs of yelling.” That is, when anger is directed by a woman against a man who has not left the seat in the correct position.
Fraction Rap - They’re rapping about fractions! Square One TV! Thanks, Katy.
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
— Albert Einstein
Image of Mathematicians on Postage Stamps - Only online, folks.
Special Numbers - Have a number in mind? Find out what’s special about it! For Katy.