This is a radical statement about the Pyramid, especially on the internet because all web pages that I have been able to find that deal with the Pyramid, maintain that it was built and/or inspired by either God or space aliens. Most don't even consider that it could be a rational structure designed and built by normal people.
posted by troll
on Dec 30, 2011 -
42 comments
An "Exciting Guide to Probability Distributions" from the University of Oxford:
part 1,
part 2. (Two links to PDFs)
posted by JoeXIII007
on Dec 15, 2011 -
17 comments
In February 2011, every teacher in Providence, Rhode Island was pink slipped. Not all 1,926 of them got fired, of course, but with the district facing a $40 million deficit, anything is possible. The district says it needs flexibility, just in case. Every school district in the United States faces its own version of what’s happening in Providence. However, “
IMAGINATION: Creating the Future of Education and Work” is focused not on how we got here but rather how we can move forward from here immediately even as the education system continues to struggle.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Sep 15, 2011 -
49 comments
"Perhaps twenty or thirty people in England may be expected to read this book." G.H. Hardy's review of Whitehead and Russell's
Principia Mathematica, published in the Times Literary Supplement 100 years ago last week. "The time has passed when a philosopher can afford to be ignorant of mathematics, and a little perseverance will be well rewarded. It will be something to learn how many of the spectres that have haunted philosophers modern mathematics has finally laid to rest."
posted by escabeche
on Sep 12, 2011 -
29 comments
Before it was a website, Ask A Mathematician / Ask A Physicist was two guys sitting in the desert at Burning Man, presuming to answer (almost) any question that happened to occur to whomever happened to appear at our stand. [more inside]
posted by Obscure Reference
on Aug 27, 2011 -
42 comments
Microsoft Mathematics is a free
Computer Algebra System (CAS) available from Microsoft. A
CAS is a program that can solve purely symbolic mathematical equations. For example, the program can tell you that the derivative of 6x^2 + 12x is 12x + 12. The program has functions for calculus, statistics, linear algebra, and graphing. One interesting feature of the program is that in some cases it can show and describe the intermediate steps involved in solving an equation. Here’s a
16 page tutorial (in MS Word docx format) showing how to use the program. The program can be downloaded from the
Microsoft download page. Thirty-two and sixty-four bit versions are available. The program only works on XP/Vista/Windows 7.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear
on May 23, 2011 -
56 comments
Let's say you're me and you're in math class, and you're supposed to be learning about factoring. Trouble is, your teacher is too busy trying to convince you that factoring is a useful skill for the average person to know with real-world applications ranging from passing your state exams all the way to getting a higher SAT score and unfortunately does not have the time to show you why factoring is actually interesting. It's perfectly reasonable for you to get bored in this situation. So like any reasonable person, you start doodling.
[more inside]
posted by ErWenn
on Dec 3, 2010 -
27 comments
A Brief History of Mathematics is a BBC series of ten fifteen-minute podcasts by Professor Marcus du Sautoy about the history of mathematics from Newton and Leibniz to Nicolas Bourbaki, the pseudonym of a group of French 20th Century mathematicians. Among those covered by Professor du Sautoy are Euler, Fourier and Poincaré. The podcasts also include short interviews with people such as Brian Eno and Roger Penrose.
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 1, 2010 -
11 comments
The 300th issue of
This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics will be the last. It is not an exaggeration to say that when
John Baez started publishing TWF in 1993, he invented the science blog, and an (academic) generation has now grown up reading his thoughts on
higher category theory,
zeta functions,
quantum gravity,
crazy pictures of roots of polynomials,
science fiction, and everything else that can loosely be called either "mathematical" or "physics."
Baez continues to blog actively at
n-category cafe and the associated
nLab (an intriguingly fermented commune of mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers.) He is now starting a new blog,
Azimuth, "centered around the theme of
what scientists can do to help save the planet."
posted by escabeche
on Aug 14, 2010 -
17 comments
