Mathematics

Want kids to get excited about math? Show them this article

How does a former math teacher in Texas keep winning the lottery?  Joan Ginther has hit four Texas Lottery jackpots and raked in $21 million since 1993 ($5.5 million, half of the Texas Lottery jackpot, that first time).  The last time she won was two years ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Jul 13 2010 - 6:41pm

Polls, Changing My Underwear, And Attribute Importance

It really isn't necessary for me to have an opinion on any topic at hand- it's so much easier to consult the latest poll to know how my fellow humans feel about an issue (and by extension, how I should feel about it too). Hermann Hesse writes tha ...

Article - Becky Jungbauer - Jul 17 2010 - 9:31pm

Collatz sequences

I am playing with Coq and Isabelle now:) Formalizing the following: fun p(a) = if (p(a) % 2 = 0) then (p(a div 2)) else (a). The greatest divisor of a, which is power of two = p(a). ...

Blog Post - Helium Väli - Jul 18 2010 - 10:58pm

The Chaos Theory Of Heart Attacks

Chaos is the disorder of a dynamical system but it is not completely unpredictable.   Researchers are convinced that locating the origin of chaos and watching it develop might allow science to predict, and perhaps counteract, outcomes. Like having a heart ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 21 2010 - 3:37pm

Wolfram|Alpha brings Powerful Computation to Everyone

Stephen Wolfram has spent his life to date-- and will likely continue to do so-- developing amazing new computational technologies to empower scientists and academics to more efficiently and effectively compute their way through their research, and even h ...

Blog Post - Matthew T. Dearing - Jul 22 2010 - 7:08pm

NP=P Solved! $1M Millennium Prize?

Vinay Deolalikar from HP Labs claims proof of Millenium Prize problem P=NP, and (potential) $1M prize (pending peer review)! This deceptively simple little bugger (think e=mc^2) has, until now, stumped all suitors—basically it asks whether problems that h ...

Blog Post - Garth Sundem - Aug 10 2010 - 9:31pm

Statistics Suggest Brett Favre Will Not Win The Superbowl This Year

As a resident of the Elysian Fields that is the Twin Cities, I have been deluged by the Favreian Circus descending upon our fair binary metro area, and I. Am. So. Over. It. The bacchanal over Number Four's return has spread through the sports-writing ...

Article - Becky Jungbauer - Aug 21 2010 - 12:02pm

Coincidences Without Contingency

Coincidences in physics and in a sense infinite coincidences in mathematics are coincidences also because of the contingency around them: It could have been different. There is this type of coincidence that Tommaso was writing about that exemplifies conti ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Sep 6 2010 - 11:57am

Mathematics Tackles Chaotic Big Bang Question

We want to know some things in science are absolute yet we accept that a lot is relative.    The speed of light is absolute and so the same with respect to any observer in empty space but sound is relative, like when a train whistle goes from high to low a ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 7 2010 - 5:36pm

How Group Theory Dispelled My Worry About Mirrors

I remember, as a child, being very upset by a ventriloquist’s dummy at a show, and crying out and making a ‘scene’.  Even well into my teens and beyond, I felt disturbed by “magic”, even in mathematics or science.  One particular incident I remember was be ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Sep 17 2010 - 6:35pm