Heptagons, and the politics of 19th century France.

[This is a back-issue of one of this site’s newsletters]

When I was in junior high school, my math teacher was teaching us about ruler-and-compass constructions. Do they still teach this to kids? Anyway, he’d taught us how to construct certain shapes, then informed us – the heptagon, or regular seven-sided polygon, can’t be constructed using a ruler and compass.

Continue reading Heptagons, and the politics of 19th century France.

Squares And Infinities

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So, President was being briefed by his Chiefs Of
Staff on the latest conflict. He listened, asked questions, hummed and
ahed. Then he asked “were there any casualties?”

The Defense Chief nodded. “Three Brazilian soldiers were killed”

“Oh my God.” said the President. He clutched the edge of his desk. A
tear appeared at the edge of his eye. “My God.”

The Chiefs glanced at one another, unsure how to respond to the
President’s obvious grief. Finally he looked up.

“How many millions in a brazillion?”

Oh-kay… not sure where that one came from. Ahem.

So, I got my computer to make a video, showing how to construct a
square with a ruler and a compass. You can see it here

.

Back to big numbers. A number of years ago, I ran a Big Numbers
Contest through my website. Kids had to come up with the biggest
number they could

write in a two inch by four inch box. You’d think that out of the
infinity of numbers, there’d be a clear winner. Astoundingly, the
competition ended in a draw

.

The rules said kids couldn’t write “Infinity”. The obvious reason is
that that would make the contest too easy. The real reason is that
“Infinity” isn’t a well-defined number. There are actually different
sizes of infinity.

Some of the paradoxes of infinity were made clear to me by a short
story by Stanislaw Lem, in this book

. I read it a long time ago. You may find similar presentations by
googling Hilbert’s Hotel Paradox.

Yours,

Michael Hartley


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So, President was being briefed by his Chiefs Of Staff on the latest conflict. He listened, asked questions, hummed and ahed. Then he asked "were there any casualties?"

The Defense Chief nodded. "Three Brazilian soldiers were killed"

"Oh my God." said the President. He clutched the edge of his desk. A tear appeared at the edge of his eye. "My God."

The Chiefs glanced at one another, unsure how to respond to the President’s obvious grief. Finally he looked up.

"How many millions in a brazillion?"

Oh-kay… not sure where that one came from. Ahem.

So, I got my computer to make a video, showing how to construct a square with a ruler and a compass. You can see it here.

Back to big numbers. A number of years ago, I ran a Big Numbers Contest through my website. Kids had to come up with the biggest number they could write in a two inch by four inch box. You’d think that out of the infinity of numbers, there’d be a clear winner. Astoundingly, the competition ended in a draw

The rules said kids couldn’t write "Infinity". The obvious reason is that that would make the contest too easy. The real reason is that "Infinity" isn’t a well-defined number. There are actually different sizes of infinity. 

Some of the paradoxes of infinity were made clear to me by a short story by Stanislaw Lem, in this book. I read it a long time ago. You may find similar presentations by googling Hilbert’s Hotel Paradox. 

Yours,
Michael Hartley

 

 


To see the newletter archives, This Link
If you do not want to receive any more newsletters, this link
To update your preferences and to unsubscribe visit this link
Forward a Message to Someone this link

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