Posts tagged math
Celebrating the Grandmothers of STEM
Astrophysicist Carol Jo Crannell, mathematician Annalisa Crannell, and Iolanthe Good, three generations of women who love STEM. Image: Ximena Catepillan.
In honor of my grandmother’s birthday last Thursday, I wrote about Grandma Got STEM, a blog that collects stories of older women in science careers.
Some have had illustrious careers a [...]
My Head is Not a Hairy Ball
I got a haircut, and it got me thinking about the hairy ball theorem from algebraic topology, which believe it or not is about vectors and cowlicks. Sadly, my head does not satisfy the hypotheses of the hairy ball theorem, so my cowlicks are not made of math.
Not a hairy ball.
According to my 9th grade biology teacher, the lining of my digest [...]
Strumming the Lute of Pythagoras
Columbia College Chicago instructor Ann Hanson and two of her students generously shared artwork they made using the geometric figure the “Lute of Pythagoras.”
A drawing by Joseph Koch incorporates the Lute of Pythagoras into a portrait of Pythagoras himself. Image copyright Joseph Koch. Used with permission.
The ancient mathemati [...]
On Pregnancy and Probability
I have never been pregnant, but from what I understand, it is full of bizarre cravings, frequent bathroom breaks, and a smorgasbord of medical scans and tests. This last part is what concerns Kate Owens. She is a visiting assistant professor in the math department at the College of Charleston, and she is also pregnant with her second child. [...]
This Week in Number Theory
A visualization of the twin primes using an Ulam spiral. Created by Silveira Neto and shared under a Creative Commons-attribution-share alike license.
The week of May 12 was pretty big for number theory. I wrote about some of the blog coverage of the two major results.
By now you’ve probably heard the announcements of two big results in numbe [...]
Goldbach Variations
In mid-May, Harald Helfgott of the École Normale Supériure in Paris published a proof of the ternary Goldbach conjecture, a longstanding question in number theory.
Harald Helfgott, who finished the proof of the ternary Goldbach conjecture. Image: Harald Helfgott.
Of course, making substantial progress on a problem that some of the most brilli [...]
Binary Bonsai and Other Mathematical ...
A “binary bonsai” created using an algorithmic knitting process. Image copyright Madeleine Shepherd. Used with permission.
Many of us have seen Fibonacci numbers in sunflowers and hyperbolic curvature in kale leaves. Botanica Mathematica, “a textile taxonomy of mathematical plant forms,” takes mathematical-botanical correspondences like these [...]
Award-Winning Teachers Put Math on Ha...
A mathematical hat made by Patrick Honner’s students as part of an award-winning lesson plan. Image: Patrick Honner.
Many math teachers have a hands-on approach to their subject, but those hands aren’t usually covered in finger paint. Scott Goldthorp, however, sometimes teaches messy math classes. Goldthorp, a teacher at Rosa Internatio [...]
Big Numbers Are Big
Image: xkcd
So if you’re worried that human creativity is worthless because every possible piece of literature, the MP3 of every song anyone will ever sing, the choreography of every ballet, along with the DNA of every person who will ever perform it, is encoded in pi, don’t despair. No one with any sense will be switching to a pi-mining stra [...]
Your Life in Pi
At Slate, I wrote about a pi meme that’s been going around for a few months, most recently shared by George Takei’s facebook page.
We don’t know for sure that pi contains all possible strings of decimal digits, but on a deeper level, the meme is right. And if it gets you pondering the mysteries of infinity, so much the bett [...]
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