The Mathematics of Averting the Next Big Network Failure | Wired Science | Wired.com

The Mathematics of Averting the Next Big Network Failure | Wired Science | Wired.com: "Gene Stanley never walks down stairs without holding the handrail. For a fit 71-year-old, he is deathly afraid of breaking his hip. In the elderly, such breaks can trigger fatal complications, and Stanley, a professor of physics at Boston University, thinks he knows why.

‘Everything depends on everything else,’ he said.

Three years ago, Stanley and his colleagues discovered the mathematics behind what he calls ‘the extreme fragility of interdependency.’ In a system of interconnected networks like the economy, city infrastructure or the human body, their model indicates that a small outage in one network can cascade through the entire system, touching off a sudden, catastrophic failure."

Should business be allowed to patent mathematics?

Should business be allowed to patent mathematics? - opinion - 18 March 2013 - New Scientist: "AT SOME point in their career every mathematician comes up against the question, is mathematics invented or discovered? The query makes some cranky. The answer doesn't directly affect their work, after all, and the discussion often leads nowhere useful. Spending time debating the ultimate nature of mathematics takes away from actually doing it."

Tolkien's books analyzed - LotrProject

Tolkien's books analyzed - LotrProject: "AN INTERACTIVE ANALYSIS OF TOLKIEN'S WORKS the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings --- Being passionate about both Tolkien and data visualization creating an interactive analysis of Tolkien's books seemed like a wonderful idea. To the left you will be able to explore character mentions and keyword frequency as well as sentiment analysis of the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Information on editions of the books and methods used can be found in the about section."

A Most Peculiar Test Drive | Blog | Tesla Motors

A Most Peculiar Test Drive | Blog | Tesla Motors: "After a negative experience several years ago with Top Gear, a popular automotive show, where they pretended that our car ran out of energy and had to be pushed back to the garage, we always carefully data log media drives. While the vast majority of journalists are honest, some believe the facts shouldn’t get in the way of a salacious story. In the case of Top Gear, they had literally written the script before they even received the car (we happened to find a copy of the script on a table while the car was being ‘tested’). Our car never even had a chance.

The logs show again that our Model S never had a chance with John Broder. In the case with Top Gear, their legal defense was that they never actually said it broke down, they just implied that it could and then filmed themselves pushing what viewers did not realize was a perfectly functional car. In Mr. Broder’s case, he simply did not accurately capture what happened and worked very hard to force our car to stop running."

Amateur effort finds new largest prime number | Business Tech - CNET News

Amateur effort finds new largest prime number | Business Tech - CNET News: "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has scored its 14th consecutive victory, discovering the largest prime number so far. The number, 2 to the power of 57,885,161 minus 1, is a digit that's 17,425,170 digits long. That's big enough that if you want to see the full text, you'll have to brace yourself for a 22.5MB download. GIMPS, a cooperative project splitting the search across thousands of independent computers, announced the find yesterday after it had been confirmed by other checks. At present, there are 98,980 people and 574 teams involved in the GIMPS project; their 730,562 processors perform about 129 trillion calculations per second. The project has a lock on the market for mongo new prime numbers. The discoverer of this particular prime is Curtis Cooper, a professor at the University of Central Missouri who runs the prime-hunting software on a network of computers and who's found record primes in 2005 and 2006. It's not just his effort that's important, though; it relied also on others' machines ruling out other candidates. A prime number is divisible only by itself and the number 1. Once a mathematical curiosity, primes now are crucial to encrypted communications. Mersenne primes are named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk born in 1588 who investigated a particular type of prime number: 2 to the power of 'p' minus one, in which 'p' is an ordinary prime number. Cooper's find is the 48th Mersenne prime so far discovered. GIMPS has found the 14 largest Mersenne primes, the organization said."

World’s largest prime number discovered -- all 17 million digits | Fox News

World’s largest prime number discovered -- all 17 million digits | Fox News: "If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, prime numbers are a mathematician’s.

And Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg has just found the biggest, shiniest diamond of them all.

As part of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), a computer program that networks PCs worldwide to collectively hunt for a special type of prime number, Cooper discovered the largest prime number yet late last month: a beast with 17,425,170 digits."

What Birds Know About Fractal Geometry - ScienceNOW

ScienceShot: What Birds Know About Fractal Geometry - ScienceNOW: "Birds, do your math: The pattern of feathers on the chest of your potential mate might provide a good sense of his or her overall health and well-being. In a new study, researchers find that a single number that describes the complexity of those configurations, a parameter called the fractal dimension, is linked to whether a bird has a strong immune system or is malnourished. (Fractals, possibly most well-known from pop art posters of the 1970s, are incredibly complex patterns that have the same amount of detail at all levels of scale, from the huge to the microscopic.) When scientists restricted the food of red-legged partridges (Alectoris rufa, inset), the feather patterns (details in main image) on their chests had a lower fractal dimension than those sported by their well-fed colleagues, they report online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The food-restricted birds, on average, weighed 13% less than their well-fed colleagues and had weaker immune systems, which makes fractal dimension an easily recognizable sign of a potential mate's health and vitality, the researchers contend. "