geekpoints++; (Oh God, that didn’t help.)
Why I both love and hate mathematics:
From Volume I of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russel’s Principia Mathematica, page 379:
“From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2.”
This proof of this proposition is completed 373 pages later, on page 86 of Volume II, along with the note:
“The above proposition is occasionally useful.”
Thanks, Math. Love/hate you.
Happy Pi Day, everybody! Hope you have a splendid one. As a Pi Day present, I’ll share with you my favorite approximation of pi: Buffon’s Needle, where pi can be reasonably approximated by throwing small sticks over one’s shoulder on a hardwood floor.
I’m still in sunny Madrid, but today was my last full day. I had some wonderful paella right off the Plaza Mayor, then saw all the typical touristy things. I leave first thing tomorrow morning, and fly back to a job interview. Eesh!
Just to keep you up to speed on my challenge to Will Smith, I’m now down to 3 minutes, 13.47 seconds.
Watch your back, Fresh Prince!
Also, being the good brother that I am, I got my kid sister Megan a cube for Christmas. She’s been playing with mine for a few days now, and she’s hot on Big Willy’s tail too. She’s down to four and a half minutes. I’d say we got a good gene, but one of my other sisters spent 4 hours with a cube without any luck, so that’s clearly not the case.
So how was your Christmas?
Just a follow-up to yesterday’s post, it took me a solid few hours to solve my brand-spankin’-new Rubik’s Cube for the first time yesterday. After a day of practice though, I’ve significantly improved. About 10 minutes ago, I solved a thoroughly scrambled cube in 7 minutes and 15.86 seconds.
Alright, so I’m a nerd. But just wait until you and I run into Will Smith on the street and he challenges us to a Rubik’s Cube Solving Challenge, and you can’t even accept. Then we’ll see who the real man is.
UPDATE: 5 minutes, 42.18 seconds.
UPDATE: 5 minutes, 39.83 seconds.
UPDATE: 5 minutes, 34.27 seconds. I’m coming for you, Will Smith!
UPDATE: 4 minutes, 38.31 seconds.
It’s that time of the semester again: class registration time!
Naturally, I had to do some credit-counting to figure out the remainder of my college career. And what did I realize? I’m graduating in 2 semesters (one semester early) with a major and two minors (Mathematics, Pre-Business Studies, and Computer Science, respectively).
And the kicker: I’ll be graduating roughly ten days after my 21st birthday. That is, needless to say, terrifying.
Eesh.
On a lighter note, here’s a video of a guy juggling inside an eight foot tall inverted plastic cone. I like to call it “Bohr’s Model of a Juggler.” (Hooray atomic physics jokes!)
A follow up to the previous post: Grigory Perlman has indeed won the Fields Medal for his possible proof of the Poincaré conjecture, but has declined the award.
Wow.
In the most mysterious piece of math news this year, an eccentric Russian mathematician who “looked like Rasputin, with long hair and fingernails,” showed up out of nowhere, solved the century-old Poincaré conjecture, and disappeared again, leaving behind a $1 million cash prize, a Fields Medal, and mathematical immortality.
If you feel like this is over your head, here’s the takeaway message from the article:
A sphere, a cigar, and a rabbit’s head are all the same.
(More on the Poincaré conjecture.)
ScienceNews Online has written up an article about math jokes in The Simpsons, including such nerdy gems as two “near miss” solutions to Fermat’s Last Theorem.
The most interesting part is that of the head writers, one has a master’s degree in computer science, one a Ph.D. in computer science, and another a Ph.D. in applied math. I guess there is hope for my math degree after all.
One last math joke that’s not mentioned in the article is the Powers of Ten couch opening, which ties in nicely with my post from yesterday.
Some kind soul has put my favorite movie of all time on YouTube: Charles and Ray Eames’ “Powers of Ten”.
My neighbor and I would sit around for hours just watching this on loop, and we once even edited the Wikipedia entry to state, “This is the most amazing film ever produced in the history of movie-making. Ever.” (This was quickly edited out by someone less awesome, but it lives on in the history!)
The sound on the YouTube version is unfortunately a bit out of sync, but luckily I have my own copy. Contact me if you’d like a nicer quality version.