Ever.
[Late evening update]
“This sentence is false.”
Category Archives: Mathematics
My Pet Peeve Du Jour
I hate web pages that don’t let you back out of them. It’s an interesting story about using math to track gang activity, but follow the link at your peril.
[Update for those interested]
I’m using Firefox 6.0.2 in Linux.
Declaring War On Class Warfare
Looks like Paul Ryan is going to deliver a much-needed speech tomorrow.
[Update a few minutes later]
“That’s not class warfare. It’s math.”
Forget math. This guy can’t even do basic arithmetic. And apparently neither can anyone on his staff. Can we see his grades, now?
[Update a few minutes later]
A follow-up for those attempting to defend the president’s math.
Remember That FTL Neutrino?
It wasn’t. Einstein was right once again.
A Remedial Math Lesson
…for Barack Obama, from his cousin.
Well, to be fair, the president probably didn’t do well in math. Or never took it. Hard to know without seeing his transcripts.
On Beauty, And Truth
Some thoughts from the late Richard Feynman:
[Via Geek Press]
Having A Good Working Memory
It’s never been one of my strengths. I always liked math and physics because they didn’t require much memorization — I could just rederive formulas on the fly. One of the reasons that I never seriously considered being a doctor was the amount of memorization required. And I think that for that profession in particular, memory is important, and apparently more so than intelligence or processing capability, because I’ve met doctors who I didn’t think were all that smart, and I don’t intrinsically respect them just because they’re doctors. At least not as much as they and society thinks I’m supposed to.
Self-Referential
…sentences. My favorite in the self-defeating genre is one (perhaps apocryphally) attributed to von Braun: “You can’t make something fool proof, because fools are too ingenious.”
Also, how Buzz Lightyear made a child self-aware.
[Both links via Geek Press]
Non-Intuitive
A few years ago, on a Delta flight, I noticed that the airline was boarding people in the middle first. I asked the flight attendant about it, and he said that studies had shown that it was faster than back to front, which surprised me, because the latter had always been conventional wisdom and industry practice. Now, American claims that, based on simulations, random boarding is better yet. I’d be interested to see a plausible explanation for this, if true.
Revolutionizing Education
…with the Khan Academy.