Some time ago, I wrote a couple of posts distinguishing All Possible Math from the Math We Know. In short, people only study the mathematics that is interesting or useful to us, and not too hard. When you think about that it becomes clear that there’s a lot more mathematics possible than the stuff Homo Sapiens talks about. Much of All Possible Math would be uninteresting for us, useless and/or too hard to grasp.
Archive for the ‘Miscellany’ Category
Keep This In Mind
23
Dec
When reading the news, keep in mind that just because two things change together, doesn’t mean there’s any direct causal link.
7 Billion
31
Oct
According to official sources, the world’s 7 billionth person was born today. This is a fiction. The goal is to raise awareness about the world’s population. It’s working – the news seems to be all over the blogosphere.
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Mathematics
05
Oct
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers the foundations of mathematics to be contradictory, they will instantly disappear and be replaced with something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened”
Dice and Polynomials – Part 2
21
Aug
Can polynomials help invent new dice?
In my last blog post, I explained how to quickly and easily work out, say, the number of ways to get a 10 on three dice, just by multiplying together some polynomials. It doesn’t have to be real dice of course. The trick works just as well for spinners, balls in a hat, or computer random number generators.
Dice and Polynomials – Part 1
21
Aug
Can polynomials help calculate probabilities?
Imagine you have two coins. One side is blank, and one has a single dot. You flip the coins. How many ways can you get 0 dots? How many ways can you get 1 dot? How many ways can you get 2 dots?
If you got answers like “1 way / 2 ways / 1 way” you got it right.
7 Is Not Prime, and Fermat’s Last Theorem
06
Aug
I was reading a book about numbers recently, and almost put it down when it started talking about prime numbers. The author had tried to work out the prime factors of 72, got as far as 2 x 2 x 2 x 9, then said “you guessed it, 9 is a prime number!” Arrgh!
Adding Heat Doesn’t Cool It Down
13
Jun
This post is wrong!! It’s been pointed out that adding salt to boiling water raises the boiling point. It doesn’t lower it. So something very strange was happening in the experiment below. Perhaps it was just a screwy thermometer??
Just for a change, here’s a post about Chemistry. Or Physics, some might argue. I say Chemistry.
My son had just finished some questions in a science workbook, and I had to mark it. Unfortunately, there was one question I didn’t know the answer to – does adding salt to water lower its boiling point?
Truth, Beauty and Practical Math
05
Apr
In an earlier post, I discussed whether math was really real, or just made up. I came to the conclusion that there’s a difference between the math that is implicit in the laws of logic, and the math that people happen to study and learn. The difference is that the latter is much much smaller than the former.
Is Math Real or Invented?
01
Apr
When we learn that, say, 2+2=4, is that something really true about the universe, or is it something some caveman made up? Does a cube exist as something more than just a figment of our imagination?