Follow-up: The Infinite Series and the Mind-Blowing Result.

Follow-up: The Infinite Series and the Mind-Blowing Result.: "The infinite series in the video (1+2+3+4+5+…) can in fact be tackled using a rigorous mathematical method and can in fact be assigned a value of -1/12! This method is quite real and very useful. And yes, the weirdness of it is brain melting."

This Video Shows Just How Beautiful Mathematics Is

This Video Shows Just How Beautiful Mathematics Is: "Betrand Russell once wrote that '[m]athematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music.' In this video, Yann Pineill and Nicolas Lefaucheux prove him right.

In the triptych video, an equation appears on the left, a technical diagram in the middle, and real-life footage of the phenomenon in question on the right. Covering everything from the motion of spinning of a top, through computer architecture, to the sugar in your coffee, it shows how simple and elegant mathematical equations can explain incredibly complex concepts. Mathematics really is beautiful. "

Run historic software in your Web browser - TechBlog

Run historic software in your Web browser - TechBlog: "The personal computer revolution is now almost 40 years old – if you date it from the original Altair 8800 – and a lot of software has come and gone since then. Many of the earliest applications won’t run on today’s powerful machines – if you can find copies of them at all.

For some time, The Internet Archive has maintained a collection of classic code that you could download, though you might have to find and install the right emulation software. Now, the site has made it easy to run some of the programs right in your Web browser with the Historical Software Archive.

That’s right, now you can once again experience the thrill of writing in WordStar, in all its green-screen, CP/M-based glory."

Family's anger as council orders removal of sudoku headstone of mathematician Allan Robinson | Mail Online

Family's anger as council orders removal of sudoku headstone of mathematician Allan Robinson | Mail Online: "When retired mathematician Allan Robinson passed away after a battle with cancer, his grieving family chose an epitaph that he would have heartily approved of – a sudoku puzzle and equation.

It did not take long, however, before zealous officials on the parish council had formed their own rather bizarre opinion of the gravestone.

They ordered Mr Robinson’s widow Angela to remove the highly personal engravings because they are ‘contrary to guidelines for headstone inscriptions’."

Formula for the perfect PIZZA revealed: Mathematician creates equation to ensure you don't burn - or undercook - a margherita | Mail Online

Formula for the perfect PIZZA revealed: Mathematician creates equation to ensure you don't burn - or undercook - a margherita | Mail Online: "Soggy bottoms and burnt crusts could be a thing of the past for troubled cooks who are making pizzas from scratch at home.

A mathematician claims to have come up with the first-ever formula for the 'perfectly proportioned' pizza, taking into account factors like the ratio of topping to base.

Dr Eugenia Cheng said pizza lovers get more topping per bite in a smaller pizza, but a more even spread of bites in a larger pizza."

Voevodsky’s Mathematical Revolution | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network

Voevodsky’s Mathematical Revolution | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network: "Voevodsky told mathematicians that their lives are about to change. Soon enough, they’re going to find themselves doing mathematics at the computer, with the aid of computer proof assistants. Soon, they won’t consider a theorem proven until a computer has verified it. Soon, they’ll be able to collaborate freely, even with mathematicians whose skills they don’t have confidence in. And soon, they’ll understand the foundations of mathematics very differently."

The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks | Television & radio | The Observer

The Simpsons' secret formula: it's written by maths geeks | Television & radio | The Observer: "Without doubt, the most mathematically sophisticated television show in the history of primetime broadcasting is The Simpsons. This is not a figment of my deranged mind, which admittedly is obsessed with both The Simpsons and mathematics, but rather it is a concrete claim backed up in a series of remarkable episodes."

Physicists Discover Geometry Underlying Particle Physics

Physicists Discover Geometry Underlying Particle Physics | Simons Foundation: "Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.

‘This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,’ said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work."

How to Fall in Love With Math - NYTimes.com

How to Fall in Love With Math - NYTimes.com: "EACH time I hear someone say, ‘Do the math,’ I grit my teeth. Invariably a reference to something mundane like addition or multiplication, the phrase reinforces how little awareness there is about the breadth and scope of the subject, how so many people identify mathematics with just one element: arithmetic. Imagine, if you will, using, ‘Do the lit’ as an exhortation to spell correctly."

Mathematica—Celebrating 25 Years of Contributions, Invention, Discovery, and Education

Mathematica—Celebrating 25 Years of Contributions, Invention, Discovery, and Education: "The Mathematica Story: A Scrapbook"

Mathematical Impressions: Making Music with a Möbius Strip: Scientific American

Mathematical Impressions: Making Music with a Möbius Strip: Scientific American: "The connections between mathematics and music are many. For example, the differential equations of vibrating strings and surfaces help us understand harmonics and tuning systems, rhythm analysis tells us the ways a measure can be divided into beats, and the study of symmetry relates to the translations in time and pitch that occur in a fugue or canon."

Pascal's intellect helped him blaze trails in mathematics | The Tennessean | tennessean.com

Pascal's intellect helped him blaze trails in mathematics | The Tennessean | tennessean.com: "In 1642, when he was 19, Blaise Pascal thought he would try to ease his father’s burdens.

His father, Etienne Pascal, had been appointed chief tax collector in Rouen, France. The position was demanding, requiring hours of work each day adding up taxes due and paid. Blaise Pascal had an idea to speed up the arithmetical drudgery. Pascal, already a noted mathematician, built the first mechanical calculator and presented it to the chancellor of France in 1645. The machines were very expensive; he made about 20 of them."

Mathematics 'the key' to solving transport woes

Mathematics 'the key' to solving transport woes: "Imagine buses turning up every five minutes, and schedules that could deliver passengers to just about anywhere across the city. Impossible? Laughably expensive?

Professor Mark Wallace from the Monash University's Faculty of Information Technology says it's a goer. Mathematics, not massive infrastructure spending, is the key.

'You'd need twice as many buses, not 10 times as most people might imagine,' he says.

Some of the initiatives to make it work include adaptive scheduling (where the local schedule is flexible, and responds to direct consumer demand); more bus lanes; and, a system where local bus networks talk to one another and have coordinated changeover stations, so you have more efficient use of the limited bus numbers, which works against traffic congestion."

Mathematics is not a friend of baseball | Dallas-Fort Worth Sports News - Sports News on the ...

Mathematics is not a friend of baseball | Dallas-Fort Worth Sports News - Sports News on the ...: "The counting craze that once was cute and chic is now all but ruining America’s second favorite pastime.

Scores of math whizzes, nerds and live-in-their-parents’-basement geeks are threatening to turn Royals at Rangers into a Bobby Fischer vs. Boris Spassky chess match, minus the intellect.

This absurd baseball math obsession is now spilling over into basketball, hockey and football; in a few months, this trend will turn your child’s dodgeball game into a series of where is the best place to put little Jimmy so as to ensure his greatest chances of being able to dip, dive, duck and dodge.

Baseball was never intended to be math homework, but now baseball fans are watching pitch counts more closely than we do wins/losses, strikeouts or ERAs.

Kids, don’t listen to your parents or teachers. In this case, math is not your friend."

Texas banker puts up $1M for tricky math solution - Houston Chronicle

Texas banker puts up $1M for tricky math solution - Houston Chronicle: "A Texas banker is upping the ante to $1 million for whoever solves a tricky problem that's been dogging mathematicians since the 1980s.

The Providence, R.I.-based American Mathematical Society on Tuesday said $1 million will be awarded for the publication of a solution to the Beal Conjecture number theory problem.

Dallas banker D. Andrew Beal first offered the Beal Prize in 1997 for $5,000. Over the years, the amount has grown.

American Mathematical Society spokesman Michael Breen says a solution is more difficult than the one for a related problem, Fermat's Last Theorem, which didn't have a published solution for hundreds of years.

Beal is a self-taught mathematician and says he wants to inspire young people to pursue math and science."

13 Jokes That Every Math Geek Will Find Hilarious - SFGate

13 Jokes That Every Math Geek Will Find Hilarious - SFGate: "A physicist, a biologist, and a mathematician are sitting on a bench across from a house. They watch as two people go into the house, and then a little later, three people walk out.

The physicist says, 'The initial measurement was incorrect.'

The biologist says, 'They must have reproduced.'

And the mathematician says, 'If exactly one person enters that house, it will be empty.'"

That figures: Professor who had to work at Subway dazzles world of maths after solving centuries-old prime number riddle - Science - News - The Independent

That figures: Professor who had to work at Subway dazzles world of maths after solving centuries-old prime number riddle - Science - News - The Independent: "A university professor who was forced to work at Subway when he couldn't find a job as an academic has solved a prime number riddle that has puzzled the best mathematical brains for centuries.

Dr Yitang Zhang was enjoying the summer holiday in a friend's back garden in Colorado last year when it suddenly occurred to him that he could make a major breakthrough in the field of analytic number theory.

Prime numbers - which are only divisible by one and themselves - often come in pairs that differ by two. Five and seven, for instance, or 11 and 13. They're known as twin primes.

As numbers get larger, it becomes harder to find prime numbers. But for hundreds of years, mathematicians have believed there are an infinite number of these pairs - known as the twin prime conjecture.

While Dr Zhang could not prove that there are an infinite number of twin primes, he has found that there are an infinite number of prime pairs separated by less than 70 million. It may sound like a colossal gap, but he has essentially wrestled that figure down from infinity."

The Consequences of Machine Intelligence - Moshe Y. Vardi - The Atlantic

The Consequences of Machine Intelligence - Moshe Y. Vardi - The Atlantic: "The question of what happens when machines get to be as intelligent as and even more intelligent than people seems to occupy many science-fiction writers."

The Most Controversial Math Problems - Business Insider

The Most Controversial Math Problems - Business Insider: "Mathematics has little surprises that are designed to test and push your mental limits. The following 12 simple math problems prove outstandingly controversial among students of math, but are nonetheless facts. They're paradoxes and idiosyncrasies of probability.  And they're guaranteed to start an argument or two.  "

The mathematics of juries: The jury size and voting margins necessary for a fair trial. - Slate Magazine

The mathematics of juries: The jury size and voting margins necessary for a fair trial. - Slate Magazine: "The Marquis de Condorcet, a French philosopher and mathematician, was perhaps the first person to subject juries to mathematical analysis. In 1785, he proved a theorem that could be succinctly summarized, ‘More is better.’ Assuming that all the members of a jury have a better than 50 percent chance of determining the true innocence or guilt of the accused—a big assumption but a common one in mathematical studies of juries—larger juries are more likely to decide correctly than smaller ones."