An illustration from Oliver Byrne’s 1847 edition of Euclid’s Elements. Euclid’s fourth postulate states that all the right angles in this diagram are congruent. Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Why the heck do we need a postulate that says that all right angles are equal to one another? You probably remember lear [...]
Monthly archives for April, 2014
What’s the Deal with EuclidR...
An illustration from Oliver Byrne’s 1847 edition of Euclid’s Elements. Euclid’s fourth postulate states that all the right angles in this diagram are congruent. Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Why the heck do we need a postulate that says that all right angles are equal to one another? You probably remember lear [...]
Climate Science Blogs to Follow for E...
A picture of Earth from low orbit. Image: By NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring (- Blue Marble 2012) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.On the AMS Blog on Math Blogs, I made a few recommendations of climate science blogs that mathematicians might enjoy.
Measure Yourself by the Standard of t...
Are you more or less of a fish than this capybara? Image: VigilancePrime, via Wikimedia Commons.
As Stephen Ornes pointed out at the beginning of the month, April is both Mathematics Awareness Month and National Poetry Month, so logically we should be reading mathematical poetry. “Unit of Measure” by Sandra Beasley is a perfect po [...]
Bad Statistics: Ignore or Call Out?
3-D pie charts are usually misleading. Image: Smallman12q, via Wikimedia Commons.
Andrew Gelman has been wondering how much time he should spend criticizing crappy research, and so am I. He wrote the post after a discussion with Jeff Leek of Simply Statistics about replication and criticism. Harsh criticism of preliminary studies could discou [...]
The Slowest Way to Draw a Lute
Man Drawing a Lute, by Albrecht Dürer. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Last month, I went to a talk by mathematician Annalisa Crannell of Franklin and Marshall College called Math and Art: the good, the bad, and the pretty. She talked about how mathematical ideas of perspective show up in art and how it can help us create and appreciate [...]
Graham’s Number Is Too Big for Me to ...
I was going to write an April Fool’s Day post with the title “Mathematicians Declare Graham’s Number Equal to Infinity.” Graham’s number is really big, but of course, it’s precisely 0% as big as infinity. On the other hand, everything we touch is finite, so in some sense, Graham’s number is probably & [...]
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