Gandalf’s Function
"The Lord of the Rings", Humor, J.R.R. Tolkien, LOTR, Mathematics

Hat tip to The Meta Picture via Kathleen Wagner.
Category Archive 'Mathematics'
23 Jun 2012
Gandalf’s Function"The Lord of the Rings", Humor, J.R.R. Tolkien, LOTR, Mathematics![]() Hat tip to The Meta Picture via Kathleen Wagner. 30 May 2012
The Archimedes PalimpsestArchimedes, Archimedes Palimpsest, Books, Mathematics, Science![]() “How do you read a two-thousand-year-old manuscript that has been erased, cut up, written on and painted over [i.e., a palimpsest]? With a powerful particle accelerator, of course! Ancient books curator William Noel tells the fascinating story behind the Archimedes palimpsest, a Byzantine prayer book containing previously-unknown original writings from ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes and others.” Archimedes Palimpsest website Hat tip to Dot Porter. 22 Jan 2010
Yoshimoto CubeAmusement, Amusement, Design, Engineering, Mathematics, Nerd News![]() Two stellated rhombic dodecahedrons can be folded into a cube. “A very impressive piece of engineering.” 1:15 video Hat tip to Forgetomori, forwarded by Robert Breedlove. 16 Jan 2010
The Predator Prey Ecology of Vampires and Humans in (Pre-Apocalypse) Sunnyvale, California"Buffy the Vampire Slayer", Amusement, Amusement, California, Ecology, Mathematics![]()
Brian Dalen Thomas addresses the vexed question of human vampire ecology in the Sunnyvale, California of Joss Wheedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Excerpts: (W)e know from the sign in “Lover’s Walk†that the human population of Sunnydale is 38,500. … Sunnydale’s human population growth rate is 10% annually, which is certainly at the high end for a budding California community. A vampire feeds every three days, and encounters about one hundred potential victims in the course of a day, meaning that 1 out of every 300 encounters involves a little refreshment. An individual vampire sires a victim every other year, or once per 240 feedings. Buffy and her Slayerettes, busy little beavers that they are, annually stake about 1/3 of the vampires plaguing Sunnydale. Vampires are flocking to Sunnydale, since the Hellmouth is the underwordly equivalent of Silicon Valley, and the demon labor market is just too good to be true. Thus, we’ll assume a yearly migration rate of about 10%, or the same as for the humans. A Model What follows is based on some of the simpler theoretical understandings of predator-prey population dynamics. I’m assuming that human populations are not controlled solely by vampire predation (i.e.- in the absence of vampires, the human population would still eventually be limited by some other factor, like food supply, disease, or access to a well written weekly news magazine. I like The Economist myself, but that’s clearly a digression). If we let H stand for the size of the human population and V stand for the size of the vampire population, then we can represent the changes in each population over time with a pair of differential equations: dH/dt = rH (K-H)/K -aHV dv/dT = baHV + mV – sV where r is the intrinsic growth rate of the human population, incorporating natural rates of both birth and death as well as immigration K is the human carrying capacity of the habitat in question a is a coefficient that relates the number of human-vampire encounters to the number of actual feedings b is the proportion of feedings in which the vampire sires the victim (i.e.- this is the vampire birth rate) m is the net rate of vampire migration into Sunnydale s is the rate at which the Scoobies stake vampires (assumed to be the only important source of vampire deaths).
Hat tip to Robert M. Breedlove. 31 May 2009
16 Year Old Iraqi Immigrant Scores Math Success in SwedenBernoulli Numbers, Mathematics, Sweden![]() A 16-Year-Old Iraqi immigrant to Sweden working over four months apparently independently produced a formula for simplifying the generation of the Bernoulli Numbers, a sequence of rational numbers significant in number theory first identified in the Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli‘s Ars Conjectandi, published posthumously in 1713. Mohamed Altoumaimi’s formula was actually already known by mathematicians, but his generation of the same formula independently sufficiently impressed the academic community in Sweden that the young man was immediately offered admission to Upsala University. He has decided to finish secondary school first, however. 31 Jan 2009
The Beatle’s Unduplicatable First ChordBeatles, Mathematics, Music, Rock & Roll![]() Jason Brown, Chairman of the Mathematics Department at Dalhousie University, applies math to solving a musical mystery.
2:33 video 23 Jul 2008
Amazon Tribe Does Not Use NumbersEthnography, Mathematics![]()
Hat tip to MeaninglessHotAir. 16 Nov 2007
“An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything”Garrett Lisi, Mathematics, Physics, Science![]()
—————————————— A. Garrett Lisi, a 39-year-old researcher, equipped with a doctorate in Physics from the University of California at San Diego, and not otherwise affiliated with any university, last month published a paper proposing to link the Standard Model of Particle Physics with Gravity, expressed as an E8* root system of exceptionally simple character in Lie algebra. —————————————— *E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself 248-dimensional. ——————————————
—————————————— Lisi makes for a wonderful news subject, being a perfect California type, a surfing and rock-climbing ultra-bohemian, the sort of person found dancing around the fire at the annual Burning Man Festival. His theory has a wonderful appeal based upon its simplicity (no pun intended) and elegance, but we will have to wait to see whether it is confirmable by testable predictions. The Telegraph article quotes some scientists who regard Lisi’s theory as “a long shot,” but there is general agreement already on how interesting and elegant it is. However all this comes out, my own (testable) prediction is that A. Garrett Lisi will be receiving some very good offers of academic appointments at major universities. —————————————— Telegraph news story ——————————————
His CV 03 Sep 2007
Ahmadinejad Says He Has Mathematical Proof That the US Will Not AttackIran, Iranian Nuclear Threat, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mathematics![]() He must have calculated the square root of the number of bed-wetting liberals in the American urban elite. From the Australian News.Com.Au:
Meanwhile, he is also boasting of having reached a milestone in his quest for an Iranian nuclear weapon. AFP:
19 Mar 2007
Email Humor of the DayAmusement, Humor, Mathematics![]() Why you don’t tick off an engineer…. 30 Oct 2006
Scientist Proves Vampires ImpossibleMathematics, Science, Vampires![]() Costas Efthimiou, a physics professor at the University of Central Florida, has done the math.
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