Math
Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?
≡ Category: Comedy, Math, Video – Science | ≅ View Comments
Yesterday’s lackluster academy awards ceremony may have afforded you some unexpected time for contemplating life’s more urgent questions, such as the one british comedianalan davies pursues above: how long is a piece of string? watchdavies, who is also a frequent panelist on the popular stephen fry-hosted quiz show quite interesting, explore the riddle’s philosophical implications []
Vintage MIT Calculus Lessons: Before OpenCourseWare
≡ Category: Math, MIT | ≅ View Comments
Long ago, long before mit hatched plans for its opencourseware initiative, the university taped a lecture series covering the equivalent of a freshman-level calculus course. released in 1970, the introductory class taught by herbert gross was suited for any student brushing up on his/her calculus, or learning the subject for the first time. mit has []
The Joy of Stats
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
Last month, we posted a dazzling clip €“ hans rosling tracing health trends within 200 countries over 200 years, using 120,000 data points, all in 4 minutes. pretty quickly you saw why rosling has earned a reputation for presenting data in extremely imaginative ways. the video was an outtake from a bbc documentary called €œthe []
Multiplication: The Vedic Way
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
What would 873 x 982 look like? lots of lines. but still intriguing. thanks allison for sending this our way. feel free to suggest a good link here…
200 Countries & 200 Years in 4 Minutes, Presented by Hans Rosling
≡ Category: History, Math | ≅ View Comments
Hans rosling, aprofessor of global health at sweden’skarolinska institute, focuses on ‘dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world’ (as his ted bio well notes). and he has established a reputation for presenting data in extremely imaginative ways. just watch the video above, an outtake from the bbc show “the joy of stats”). in four []
The Big Cheat
≡ Category: Business, Math, Random | ≅ View Comments
There’s high drama in the classroom at the university of central florida. richard quinn, a longtime business instructor, gives 600 students their mid-term exam. then comes the anonymous tip that cheating is rampant. forensic analysis bears that out. ultimatums are made. moral lessons drawn. soon the confessions €“ all200 of them €“ follow. a rough []
Futurist Arthur C. Clarke on Mandelbrot’s Fractals
≡ Category: Math, Sci Fi, Science | ≅ View Comments
As you may have heard, mathematician benot b. mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, died on thursday in cambridge, mass. he was 85. you can read the full obit in the new york times, and if you want to learn more about his work, let me resurface this documentary we featured not too long ago. []
The Khan Academy Now on iTunesU
≡ Category: Education, Math | ≅ View Comments
A quick note: the khan academy, which already has a robust presence on youtube and the web, now opens up shop on itunesu. this gives students yet another way to access 1800+ video tutorials that teach the ins-and-outs of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, finance, physics, economics and more. the lectures, all taped and presented []
Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” Animated (Part II)
≡ Category: Math, Music | ≅ View Comments
Michal levy takes john coltrane’s classic, “giants steps,” and interprets it through flash animation. we have posted a youtube version above, but you should ideally watch this brilliant clip on levy’s web site here. this is not the first time that “giant steps” has been animated. last year, we highlighted a popular video that makes []
Journey to the Center of a Triangle
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
A little bit of nerdgasmic fun for you. in 1977, bruce and katharine cornwell used a tektronics 4051 graphics terminal to create animated short films that demystify geometry. the films have now reemerged on the internet archive. Journey to the center of a triangle appears above. you can also watchcongruent triangles, which features the memorable ‘bach []
Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Colors of Infinity
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
In 1995, sir arthur c. clarke, the futurist and science fiction writer most well known for his novel2001: a space odyssey, presented a television documentaryon the 1980 discovery of the mandelbrot set (m-set). fractals: the colors of infinity brings us inside the world of fractal geometry, and soon enough we’re encountering what has been called []
The Math of Rock Climbing
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
Heights, i hate them. but skip garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at emory university, doesn’t mind them much, and here he describes how math figures into his passion for rock climbing €“ how it makes the difference between a safe climb and a potentially dangerous one. includes a quick trip to el capitan, a 3000 []
Powers of Ten
≡ Category: Math, Science | ≅ View Comments
In 1968, ray and charles eames produced the short film powers of ten. the movie starts with a fixed point in chicago, then zooms out into the universe by factors of ten. and, before too long, you find yourself 100 million light years away. based on kees boeke’s 1957 book,cosmic view, the 10-minute film offers []
Dangerous Knowledge
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
In this 90-minute bbc documentary, dangerous knowledge, david malone takes a close look at four mathematicians – georg cantor, ludwig boltzmann, kurt gdel and alan turing €“ whose thinking profoundly influenced modern mathematics but also drove them (or so the program argues) to insanity and eventually suicide. cantor gave us “set theory. ” boltzmann made important []
Martin Gardner: A Video Remembrance
≡ Category: Math, Science | ≅ View Comments
This past weekend, martin gardner, a gifted and prolific popularizer of mathematics andscience, passed away at 95. during his life, gardnerpublished more than 70 books and wrote the popular “mathematical games” column for scientific american magazine for 25 years. as the new york times obit notes, his mathematical writings “intrigued a generation of mathematicians,” and he []
The Joy of Math
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
If math went over your head in high school or college, here’s a great way to rediscover what you missed. in late january, steven strogatz, a professor of applied mathematics at cornell university, began blogging mathematics for the new york times. and his whole goal is to show you, the reader, the joy of math. []
Nature by Numbers
≡ Category: Film, Math | ≅ View Comments
For centuries, artists and architects have used some well-known geometrical and mathematical formulas to guide their work: the fibonacci series and spiral, the golden and angle ratios, the delauney triangulation and voronoi tessellations, etc. these formulas have a reality beyond the minds of mathematicians. they present themselves in nature, and that’s what a spanish filmmaker, []
The Beautiful Math of Coral & Crochet
≡ Category: Math, Science, TED Talks | ≅ View Comments
Our reader garnet sets the stage for this video: “mathematicians have long declared that geometrical hyperbolic space could not be modeled in the real world. now it’s been done, through crochet! watch ted video science writer margaret wertheim explain how the art of crochet emulates sea slugs creating coral structures in hyperbolic space, using art []
Calculus Lifesaver: A Free Online Course
≡ Category: Math | ≅ View Comments
Updated post: it’s rare that we get to cover math here. so here it goes: adrian banner, a lecturer at princeton, has put together a lecture series (in video) that will help students master calculus, a subject that has traditionally frustrated many students. the 24 lectures (click here and scroll down) were originally presented as []
Math & Science Tutoring on YouTube
≡ Category: Business, Math, Physics, Science | ≅ View Comments
This comes to us via a tip from twitter. the khan academy has now posted on youtube over800 videos (find a complete list here) that will teach students the ins-and-outs of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, finance, physics, economics and more. the clips have been recorded by salman khan, a harvard business school and mit grad. []
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