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Why are so many musical minds also so well suited for crunching numbers? Whether it’s Art Garfunkel’s masters degree in mathematics or the structure of the chromatic scale, it’s easy to correlate music and math. But what’s the truth of the matter?
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I venture into the overlap between the world of song and the world of calculation. We discuss what’s going on the brain, what surveys have to say about it and we’ll even call back to the interview I did with DJ Irk on the subject.
The 2011 World Science Festival in New York City culminated in a street fair by New York University and Washington Square Park. The event boasted six hours of scientifically inspiring entertainment.
So as you might imagine, children were everywhere and science experiments were rampant. Let’s look at some photos.
Love it or hate it, mathematics is a core part of who we are and the universe in which we live. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I take a sweeping look at the world of numbers. Yes, we’ll kick things off in the cradle with the number sense of infants and lizards. Then we’ll scale the mighty tower of mathematics that has allowed humanity to extend life, understand the mysteries of life and travel beyond the confines of our home planet.
But what is this tower of mathematics made of? When we really get down to it, what IS math?
Rationalist Manages to Create Least Funny Humor Equation
by Josh Clark | March 16, 2011
Alistair Clarke, an evolutionary theorist has a new book coming out wherein he’s managed to reduce the amount of pleasure we derive from humor into a pretty simple equation. According to the release on Science Daily, humor (h) is equal to the amount of misinformation present in a joke or bit (m), times the “extent to which the individual [the joke receiver] is susceptible to taking it seriously (s).”
Natalie Portman’s been in the news a lot since Sunday, what with her Oscar win for “Black Swan” and the Dior/Galliano situation. Was her wardrobe a last-minute decision? Had she really been planning to wear a Christian Dior gown before deciding on that stunning Rodarte? As much as I like fashion (and I loved that Rodarte), I found a much more interesting Portman read. Among all the buzz, was a gem pointing out Portman’s other accomplishments.
I have four kids, and they spend a fair amount of their school time on math – learning how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, how to do fractions, etc. By the time you get into middle school you are learning algebra and geometry. Now along comes a math guy (Conrad Wolfram) who says this [...]
Medieval Math as Post-apocalyptic Technology
by Robert Lamb | August 12, 2010
Post-apocalyptic fiction is full of scenarios where survivors sift through the bones and dust to uncover high-tech treasures they don’t really understand. In “Beneath the Planet of the Apes,” it was an atom bomb worshiped as a god. In “The Prince of Nothing” trilogy it was a laser weapon regarded as a magical spear.
Recently I posted about the union of science and theology in Dante’s 14th century classic “Inferno” (you can read it here) and it got me thinking: Is Western medieval mathematics analogous to the dusted-off super technology in our bleaker works of sci-fi? So it seems.
In this video you get to see the “Impossible Goal”, as well as an analysis that affirms how amazing this goal really is: If you like the idea of “bending” the ball in soccer, you will love this video, which contains many fine examples of bending: More info: – In baseball, how does a pitcher [...]
How Carriers and Phone Makers Are Strangling Android (And Google’s Plan to Save It) – “The Google Phone could be a ploy to upset the wireless industry, or it could be an expensive niche device. Either way, it is a bid to take Android back from the companies that seem hell-bent on destroying it…” Scientists [...]
Let me just begin this post by saying that I detest math. I’m not good at it and lucky for me, I don’t need to be. Having said that, this story from Sweden puts a smile on my face.
A 16 year-old Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden named Mohamed Altoumaimi has solved out a math problem that has vexed the best mathematics minds for 300 years. It took him about four months. What he did was come up with a formula that explains and simplifies the “Bernoulli numbers.”
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