Logic/Math — No comments
08
Jan 10
Evidently there’s a newish biography out about Grigori Perelman, the man primarily responsible for solving the Poincaré Conjecture. Masha Gessen, a Russian journalist and author, has released “Perfect Rigor: A Genius + the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century”, a work about the life of the curious mathematician who has vanished from the professional math community. She explains her work in an interview with failuremag.com, in which she describes the rationale behind the work, and gives some insights into both the Poincaré Conjecture and the life of Perelman.
There’s no doubt that Perelman’s response to solving one of math’s longest standing problems is part of what is so intriguing to the lay reader. He turned down a Field’s medal and withdrew from professional mathematics. Pieces on him tend to accentuate his eccentricities. Part of what makes the story so very interesting is Perelman’s response, as well as the other cast of characters involved in the solving of the problem. Though it came out in mid-2006, the New Yorker has a fantastic article about the solving of the Poincaré Conjecture and the controversy surrounding it. If you’d like to understand to a greater extent Perelman’s response to his solution, read this article. It’s long, but extremely informative and complete.
Entertainment — No comments
08
Jan 10
Matt Gaffney, a 15 year veteran of professional crossword puzzle writing, wrote an article in late November for Slate about the likeliness of two crossword puzzle creators replicating the same, or approximately the same, puzzle. Crosswords exhibit 180-degree rotational symmetry, meaning that “if you turn the grid upside down, the pattern of black squares will look the same as it does right-side up.” Couple that with a specifically themed puzzle (e.g. Halloween and Edgar Allen Poe), a certain number of long word entries, and general crossword rules (e.g. no two letter words are allowed), the probability may be higher than you think.
In a nutshell, Gaffney found that he had inadvertently used many similar aspects of a puzzle that had been released earlier in the year, and thus traces several reasons why this may have been the case. One interesting twist to the story is what happens when Gaffney asks a third crossword creator to write a similarly themed puzzle. Do you think that this third puzzle turned out to have similar entries to the first two? Read to find out!
(Photo by jessie.whittle)
Art — No comments
07
Jan 10
Having just completed both of Lewis Carol’s books concerning Alice and her adventures in Wonderland, the recent Boing Boing post about Melanie Bayley and her research into the idea that scenes were added into the narrative after the initial draft in order to mock new math of the day, namely symbolic algebra. As one example, Bayley likens the Mad Hatter tea party scene to the concept of the quaternion introduced by William Rowan Hamilton. Without giving away the punchline, Bayley paints an interesting picture of why the three guests at the tea party are stuck at their table, constantly swapping seats. Read the full article at New Scientist here, which gives many more examples of how Carol lampooned the so-called “new math”. Who likes imaginary numbers, anyway?
Art — No comments
07
Jan 10
My mother-in-law made me privy to a story that aired on NPR about a group of people who built a copy of Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine using only materials available from the Victorian age, which is a feat which alluded the mathematician during his lifetime. This machine is the second of two that has been built, and is on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. through the end of 2010. Concerning the physical dimensions of the machine:
“The Difference Engine fills half a gallery and stands taller than most men. It’s 5 tons of cast iron, steel and bronze woven together from 8,000 distinct parts. Though it looks like it could be a sculpture, the machine is essentially a giant calculator.”
In other words, it’s gigantic. And it works. It was the best computer that money could buy in 1840, which is probably why it was never actually built. Way too complex and way too much money. It’s worth checking out the NPR story just to see the photos of this monstrous machine. There’s also a video of the machine in action on the Computer History Museum webpage for the Babbage Engine exhibit here.
