What are the odds?
A production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead inspired two blog posts about coin flips and probability.
As they keep flipping coins and Rosencrantz’s purse continues to grow, Guildenstern concludes that there are several possible explanations for the extremely unlikely run of heads:
“One: I’m wi [...]
Monthly archives for January, 2014
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Flip Coi...
What are the odds?
A production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead inspired two blog posts about coin flips and probability.
As they keep flipping coins and Rosencrantz’s purse continues to grow, Guildenstern concludes that there are several possible explanations for the extremely unlikely run of heads:
“One: I’m wi [...]
Does 1+2+3… Really Equal -1/12?
Analytic continuation Lucille says, “I’m going to stick an equals sign between the value of the analytic continuation of a function at a point and the infinite series that defines the function elsewhere.” Video from Fox, gif from fanpop.com.
I’m usually a fan of the Numberphile crew, who do a great job making mathemati [...]
The Revolution Will Be 3-D Printed
Ducks and blocks illustrating different resolution options on the Afinia 3D printer. Image: Laura Taalman. Used with permission.
I’m impressed with the wide range of things Taalman prints at home. In addition to cool math stuff (more on that in a moment), she makes toys such as Daleks and polyhedral bears and useful household objects such as [...]
Collective Nouns for Mathematicians
A “proof” of mathematicians at the 2013 Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego. Image: American Mathematical Society.
Every once in a while I stumble on an interesting collective noun, usually for animals: a parliament of owls, a knot of toads, an exaltation of larks. I’ll be at the Joint Math Meetings this week with severa [...]
Felix Klein on Mathematical Progress
A diagram of a Klein bottle, one of the many mathematical objects named after German mathematician Felix Klein. Image: Vierkantswortel2, via Wikimedia Commons.
“With the present means of publication and the continually increasing number of new memoirs, it has become almost impossible to survey comprehensively the different branches of m [...]
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