MetaFilter posts tagged with maths

Overthinking Carol

Kadin2048 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:57:35 -0800

The Carol Syndrome "Carol's perception that she scares men away is not a delusion after all. … It is not a matter of bad luck but a collateral effect of interactive rationality. A paradoxical consequence is that Carol's attractiveness acts as a repellent." Game theory (mis?)applied to dating. Dating and 'mate selection' are a popular choice for game theorists: there's the Eligible Bachelor Paradox, Nash equilibria as an explanation for male students' keg-party behavior, and an analysis of dating strategies (including the 'Idealistic Love Strategy w/ Time Restriction' and 'Advanced Young Love Strategy'). Still, others have competing theories. (Via HN)

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

Artw — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:13:08 -0800

Home taping didn’t kill music, says Ben Goldacre - but where did all the money go?

dY dVorce = ?

UbuRoivas — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:48:54 -0800

Oxford Professor & Fellow of the Royal Society James Murray uses mathematical modelling to predict whether a marriage will survive or end in divorce, with 94% accuracy. His lecture to the Royal Society will be available for view on demand within two days.

It's more free maths!

Iosephus — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:00:59 -0800

Online Encyclopedia of Mathematics Edited by Michiel Hazewinkel (CWI, Amsterdam), and originaly published in dead tree form in 2002, now free to browse and poke into. Seems to have been made available online by Springer-Verlag for 2 years or so, and somehow I missed it all this time until I stumbled on it during a somewhat obscure googling for a calculus question over AskMe. It seems to lack a search functionality, which is a pity. "The Online Encyclopaedia of Mathematics is the most up-to-date and comprehensive English-language graduate-level reference work in the field of mathematics today. This online edition comprises more than 8,000 entries and illuminates nearly 50,000 notions in mathematics. The Encyclopaedia of Mathematics is updated on a regular basis to remain a quick, precise source of reference to mathematical definitions, concepts, explanations, surveys, examples, terminology and methods, which will prove useful for all mathematicians and other scientists who encounter mathematics in their work. "

Rock the streets

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:47:21 -0800

Whether you want to learn to lace shoes, tie shoelaces, stop shoelaces from coming undone, calculate shoelace lengths or even repair aglets, Ian's Shoelace Site has the answer!

Degree 2.0 mash-ups not advisable for computer games careers

Artw — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:11:45 -0800

95% of degree courses in video gaming at British universities leave graduates unfit to work in the industry, according to Games Up?, an organisation set up to address the UKs video games skills shortage. Maths skills are a particular weakness.

How to catch a bus

johnny novak — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:48:07 -0800

How to catch a bus.
And the paper in question. (PDF)

Symmetry. Shakespeare. Islamic medicine. Creative writing challenges.

Wolfdog — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 03:28:17 -0800

Symmetry. Shakespeare. Islamic medicine. Creative writing challenges. Four podcast series from University of Warwick.

Math classes with a cause.

jacalata — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 05:42:19 -0800

Maths classes + radical left wing = Radical Maths

Exotic Names for Exotic Shapes.

Tube — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:24:42 -0800

The Johnson Solids are a set of 92 semi-regular polyhedra, all of which are uniquely named and numbered. Except for the familiar square pyramid they all have exotic names like the Hebesphenomegacorona. A Hebesphenomegacorona in space. Number 26, the Gyrobifastigium, is unique in that if copies of itself are properly stacked together they will leave no gaps, thus making it the only space filling Johnson Solid.

The Beautiful Function

chuckdarwin — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 02:13:53 -0800

Möbius Transformations Revealed [yöutube alert] See also: Stereographic Projection Demo.

Prime Prize

meech — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:57:14 -0800

In September 2006 the largest known prime number, a 9.8 million digit number, was discovered. If you find one over ten million digits you can win US$100,000 (of which you get to keep $50,000). No maths is required - just download the software and you're away. Warning: it takes about a month to run one primality check so some patience is required. Look out though Cooper and Boone look like they might beat you to it.

E8 Structure Decoded

ericb — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:50:51 -0800

Math Team Solves the Unsolvable E8
"If you thought writing calculations to describe 3-D objects in math class was hard, consider doing the same for one with 248 dimensions. Mathematicians call such an object E₈, a symmetrical structure whose mathematical calculation has long been considered an unsolvable problem. Yet an international team of math whizzes cracked E₈'s symmetrical code in a large-scale computing project, which produced about 60 gigabytes of data. If they were to show their handiwork on paper, the written equation would cover an area the size of Manhattan."

Science

MetaMonkey — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 06:46:47 -0800

Free Science and Video Lectures Online A nice blog collecting science videos. The most recent post on Cognitive Computing, Consciousness, Science Philosophy and Mind Video Lectures has some hum-dingers.

crocheted hyperbolic flora and fauna

madamjujujive — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 18:28:26 -0800

The Institute for Figuring presents the Crocheted Hyperbolic Coral Reef Project and Hyperbolic Crocheted Cacti and Kelp (more at this flickr gallery). If you secretly spend your evenings crocheting mathematical models, help build the coral reef or send a photo of your other creations to The People's Hyperbolic Gallery. (via Wonderland)

Let's Party Like It's MCMXCIX

jack_mo — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:30:40 -0800

Roman Numerals and Arithmetic

More than you ever wanted to know about nothing at all

Eideteker — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 06:39:23 -0800

The Zero Saga contains a great deal of information about the concept of zero, and its relation to other numbers and concepts in mathematics. It was linked in Good Math, Bad Math; which contains a variety of other informative articles on the numbers that capture our imaginations. (Note: You may want to skip past part 4 of the Zero Saga, as it contains replies to the site, and as such should probably be at the bottom of the page. But, to compensate, the comments on Good Math are better than most blogs I've read.)

Meta Math

MetaMonkey — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 03:32:13 -0800

Gregory Chaitin's Meta Math! The Quest For Omega
"Okay, what I was able to find, or construct, is a funny area of pure mathematics where things are true for no reason, they're true by accident... It's a place where God plays dice with mathematical truth. It consists of mathematical facts which are so delicately balanced between being true or false that we're never going to know, and so you might as well toss a coin." From Paradoxes of Randomness.
"In my opinion, Omega suggests that even though maths and physics are different, perhaps they are not as different as most people think. To put it bluntly, if the incompleteness phenomenon discovered by Gödel in 1931 is really serious — and I believe that Turing's work and my own work suggest that incompleteness is much more serious than people think — then perhaps mathematics should be pursued somewhat more in the spirit of experimental science rather than always demanding proofs for everything." From Omega and why maths has no Theory Of Everythings.
[previously, see also, via]

Sine of the times

Kwantsar — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 21:34:44 -0800

Norman Wildberger's New Trigonometry Dr Norman Wildberger has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit. The First chapter of his new book, Divine Proportions, is online (.pdf).

Math You Don't Know, and Math You Didn't Know You Didn't Know.

odinsdream — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:39:15 -0800

Jim Loy's Mathematics Page is (among other things) a collection of interesting theorems (like Napoleon's Triangle theorem), thoughtful discussions of both simple and complex math, and geometric constructions (my personal favorite); the latter of which contains surprisingly-complex discussions on the trisection of angles, or the drawing of regular pentagons.

Similarly enthralling are the pages on Billiards (and the physics of), Astronomy (and the savants of), and Physics (and the Phlogiston Theory of), all of which are rife with illustrations and diagrams. See the homepage for much more.

If you like your geometric constructions big, try Zef Damen's Crop Circle Reconstructions.

Java applets to help visualize various concepts in math, physics, and engineering

Gyan — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 14:16:07 -0800

Java applets to help visualize various concepts in math, physics, and engineering

Capturing the Unicorn

dhruva — Thu, 28 Apr 2005 21:09:56 -0800

Capturing the Unicorn : How two mathematicians helped the Met to digitally stitch together the Unicorn Tapestry. (via)

MathematicsFilter

Gyan — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 19:11:55 -0800

Mathematics Awareness Month - April 2005: Essays, DVD, Links. Prior MAMs.

Yo, books!

Wolof — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:37:00 -0800

Yo, books! Absolute masses of maths, physics, and CS books chez bhargav. Via Madame Martin

Thinking Machine 4

e.e. coli — Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:44:09 -0800

Thinking Machine 4 explores the invisible, elusive nature of thought. Play chess against a transparent intelligence, its evolving thought process visible on the board before you.

From Martin Wattenberg (with Marek Walczak); they have been noted here before.