I came across this article today on Science Daily that talks about the Pirahã, which, according to Wikipedia, are “an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe of Amazon natives, who mainly live on the banks of the Maici River in Brazil”. The Science Daily article introduced me to the fact that this tribe has no concept of precise numbers. While they do use indefinite numerical terms such as “some” and “more”, this group does not seem to have any representation for concepts such as “one” or “two”. As MIT professor Edward Gibson states, “here is a group that does not count. They could learn, but it’s not useful in their culture, so they’ve never picked it up.” Absolutely fascinating. You should certainly check out the two links above, especially the portion in the Science Daily article that describes some of the experiments carried out by Gibson and his MIT team that have further illuminated this portion of the Pirahã culture.
This article intrigued me so much that I dug a bit deeper, and found that Daniel L. Everett, the Chair of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures from Illinois State University, has spent a good portion of his career working with the Pirahã people. He has collaborated in the past with Gibson on various projects in the past. Some info can be found here. There’s a great New Yorker story that was published in April 2007 on Dan here that’s certainly worth a look. Here’s a teaser from this article:
The Pirahã, Everett wrote, have no numbers, no fixed color terms, no perfect tense, no deep memory, no tradition of art or drawing, and no words for “all,” “each,” “every,” “most,” or “few”—terms of quantification believed by some linguists to be among the common building blocks of human cognition.
It’s a very long article, but it paints a beautiful picture of linguistics, cognition, faith, and personal relationships. It’s packed full of great questions. There’s a LOT that’s in these writings I’ve linked to that I haven’t even brought up (including the idea of recursion in linguistics), so I urge you all to read more! There are also some great links for further reading in the Wikipedia article linked to above, including several scholarly papers.

A friend let me know quite a while ago about
Let’s be honest…there are certain subjects that a math-ish kind of blog must mention at some point. One of these obligatory topics happens to be the “0.9999999… = 1″ proof. It’s one of those facts that delights the mathematically inclined. It’s sort of like the joke that Grandpa always tells when the family gets together: you know it’s coming, and you know how much pleasure he gets out of relaying the joke, but for goodness sake, this is the 99th time you’ve heard the punchline. At any rate, there is a set of about 15 math facts that people love to talk about simply because they’re all totaling mind-blowing or sound totally nonsensical. I tend to think that the “0.9999999… = 1″ proof belongs in the latter category.
I came across 
I’ve decided to try to do a weekly feature called “Proof of the Week,” where I’ll explain a mathematical proof that I find particularly illuminating or intriguing. Part of the reason that I write so many math posts on this blog is that I feel that much of the beauty of math is an acquired taste. So my desire is to help serve as a “waiter” who introduces people to some of the fascinating tidbits of the subject. I know a lot of people who run (or roll their eyes) when they hear the word “math.” It brings back terrifying memories of grade school multiplication tests and what not. I don’t blame you. My fourth grade math teacher used to slam a book shut at the end of every minute long mad-dash times test. It scared the bejeus out of me every time. Even so, I still love math.
Fractals are beautiful things. If you don’t know what a fractal is, you should read 
Though I’m a little bit late on this,
I love when people intentionally mix together mathematics and art, and one of the best examples of this merger that I’ve seen for awhile can be found 
Well good grief, how can I possibly improve on this headline? In the spirit of Halloween, check out
I was meandering through the
I’m sure most of you have heard by now, but on Tuesday
I started thinking about the RSA Factoring challenge the other day when I received my RSA SecureID® fob to log into the UPMC network offsite. According to the RSA website, “The RSA Factoring challenge is an effort, sponsored by RSA Laboratories, to learn about the actual difficulty of factoring large numbers of the type used in RSA keys. A set of eight challenge numbers, ranging in size from 576 bits to 2048 bits is posted
It looks like the New York Times has a story today about the proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. You can read the article
I’ve noticed a trend…
First off, I want to welcome everyone from
Check out
There’s a great
264 years ago today Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to fellow mathematician Leonhard Euler in which he conjectured a very simple idea.
According to its 
For those who don’t know, April happens to be Mathematics Awareness Month (MAM). According to the MAM website, “Mathematics Awareness Month is held each year in April. Its goal is to increase public understanding of and appreciation for mathematics.” The organization which sponsors this month is the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, which “is a collaborative effort of the American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.”
graphics into the blog. I’d like to thank Steve…
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