Posts in category Roots of Unity
Make Mathemusic with Me at Bridges
Click to get the Bridges workshop worksheet!
Here’s what I wrote about the workshop for my Scientific American blog Roots of Unity:
Later this week, I’ll be heading to Baltimore for the annual Bridges Math+Art conference. I’ve written about Bridges before, but this is my first time attending. The conference has presentations on everythi [...]
Math Twitter Bots, Reviewed and Rated
Math+Twitter Image: Design Shack.
From prime numbers to hexagons to an endless search for the first uninteresting integer, check out my reviews of math Twitter bots on Roots of Unity.
The Shocking Failure of British Rail ...
A British train approaches a station. Image: Ingy the Wingy, via flickr.
I spent about a month in the UK earlier this summer, and that meant I took a lot of train trips. I love riding trains: the feeling of endless possibility I get when I look at the departure boards, the countryside rolling by, the fantastic people-watching, the two-hour de [...]
Some Infinities Are Bigger than Other...
The Fault in Our Stars has some interesting references to Cantor and different sizes of infinity. In this post at Roots of Unity, I take a look at them and explain what these potatoes have to do with a teen tearjerker.
British Objects of Constant Width
Several British objects of constant width. Image: Evelyn Lamb.
Almost immediately after getting off the plane at Heathrow, I got some breakfast and some change in the form of metal shapes of constant width. That’s right, all British coins are shapes of constant width. This isn’t remarkable because circles have constant width, and [...]
Really Big Numbers (Book Review)
Really Big Numbers by Richard Schwartz will be published by the American Mathematical Society on July 3, 2014.
“Now and then we pluck numbers from the blur…numbers which have no names except the ones we might now give them…souvenirs from alien, unknowable worlds.”
-Really Big Numbers by Richard Evan Schwartz
Read my review of Really Big Numb [...]
The Most Mathematically Perfect Day o...
The Paley graph of order 9 is a perfect graph, making it an appropriate object of veneration and study on June 28, a perfect day. Image: David Eppstein, via Wikimedia commons.
Whether you write it 6/28 or 28/6, today is a perfect day. A perfect number is a number that is the sum of its factors besides itself, and 6 (1+2+3) and 28 (1+2+4+7+14) [...]
2,4,6,8, What Does Not Associate?
On associativity, unary division, and silly facebook math problems.
How to Make “e-1″ Salad D...
Fibonacci lemonade. Image: Andrea Hawksley.
What does math taste like? Andrea Hawksley recently posted a recipe for Fibonacci lemonade, a drink that is inspired by the famous Fibonacci sequence: 1,1,2,3,5,8, and so on. It is a thing of beauty to behold, and as you drink it, you actually taste successive approximations of the golden ratio due [...]
How Not to Be Wrong (Book Review)
How Not to Be Wrong, the first popular math book by University of Wisconsin-Madison math professor Jordan Ellenberg, just hit the shelves. In addition to a Ph.D. in math, Ellenberg has an MFA in creative writing and has been writing about math for popular audiences for several years. Unsurprisingly, the book is witty, compelling, and just pla [...]
Recent Comments