Posts Tagged ‘Math’
Why did 5 eat 6?…
For over two decades, The Simpsons has been one of the best written and most entertaining programs on television. Simon Singh believes that he’s discovered the series’ secret sauce: it’s written by math geeks who unreservedly lard the show with math gags…
The first proper episode of the series in 1989 contained numerous mathematical references (including a joke about calculus), while the infamous “Treehouse of Horror VI” episode presents the most intense five minutes of mathematics ever broadcast to a mass audience. Moreover, The Simpsons has even offered viewers an obscure joke about Fermat’s last theorem, the most notorious equation in the history of mathematics.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg, because the show’s writing team includes several mathematical heavyweights. Al Jean, who worked on the first series and is now executive producer, went to Harvard University to study mathematics at the age of just 16. Others have similarly impressive degrees in maths, a few can even boast PhDs, and Jeff Westbrook resigned from a senior research post at Yale University to write scripts for Homer, Marge and the other residents of Springfield…
More on the numerical nuttiness here.
And readers can test themselves against The Simpsons writing room in this multiple choice test (wherein one will find, among other amusements, the answer to the riddle in the title above).
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As we wonder how cartoon characters count with only four fingers, we might pause to remember Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, OM, FRS; he died in this date in 1944. An astrophysicist, mathematician, and philosopher of science known for his work on the motion, distribution, evolution and structure of stars, Eddington is probably best remembered for his relationship to Einstein: he was, via a series of widely-published articles, the primary “explainer” of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the English-speaking world; and he was, in 1919, the leader of the experimental team that used observations of a solar eclipse to confirm the theory.
“The future ain’t what it used to be….”*
Just over a hundred years ago, in 1910, the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette in Iowa published a list of advances and innovations that they believed would appear during the century, a fascinating list of things scientific/technical and social/political:
- Cure for cancer.
- Discovery south pole.
- Prevent or cure insanity.
- Influence sex by parental treatment.
- Create living organisms by artificial means.
- Phonograph records substitute for letter.
- Rationing clothing reform, health, comfort, durability only considerations
- Settle question of communication with Mars. Wonderful astronomical discoveries.
- Power of mind over matter a practical science devoid of superstitious elements.
- United States constitution rewritten, providing improved means for conservation of original democratic principles.
- Marvelous progress in transportation, largely aerial; airships and dirigible balloons crossing oceans and continents in remarkable time. Racing planes make five miles per minute. Inland waterways carry slow freight by improved methods. Monorail supplants two tracks. Electricity replaces steam. Convenient, economical city traffic system broadens city areas, opening suburban lands to householders. Pneumatic tubes for mails and express. Horses curiosities. Automobiles relegated to short distance burden bearing. Ocean steamers for freight, improvement toward speed rather than size.
- Produce rainfall at will.
- Temper gold and copper.
- Roads of nation paved.
- Conservation of sun’s heat and power.
- Cure for and elimination of tuberculosis.
- Development psychic research with fraud eliminated.
- Movements for universal language, universal religion, universal money.
- Non-existence of blindness by eliminating causes except accidents.
- Construction largely of concrete and metal or newly discovered materials.
- Electricity will move world’s wheels. Later radio-activity may substitute.
- Terrors of war so multiplied by death dealing inventions, chances of war minimized.
- Utilization of all energy, reducing consumption of wood and coal. Many fuel substitutes.
- Population of United States based on present ratio of increased, 1,317,547,000 at opening of twenty-first century.
- Rational diet with greatly reduced consumption of matter with increased nourishment from proper mastication and choices of foods.
- Machinery largely substituting manual energy, will promote pursuit of finer arts and sciences; give ample opportunity for relaxation and amusement; emancipate wage slaves. Three-hour work day predicted.
- Sea water for irrigation.
- Photographs in natural colors.
- Women’s political equality.
- Government control of corporations.
- Animated pictures in natural colors, transmitted by wireless.
- Substitution of heavier metals with aluminum, etc.
- Natural colors reproduced in newspaper pictures.
- Reduction of elimination all forms of gambling, including stocks.
- General acceptance of public ownership or control of public utilities.
- Government operation banking system, elimination of private banks. Postal savings banks.
- Moral, intellectual and economical awakening in dark sections of Africa, China a world power.
- Beautiful and healthful cities, offering with homes and work places all forms of free amusement, culture and recreation.
- Greater premium on brains with corresponding decreased in respect for position not gained by individual achievement.
- Revision judicial system, deciding causes on improved scientific plan, insuring equal justice. Pathological and psychological treatment for criminals. Crime reduced.
- Due to universal education, with special reference to hygiene, doctors and drugs be largely eliminated; average age to be near 60 years; men taller, stronger, higher intelligence and morals.
Some of their predictions were spot on (“Natural colors reproduced in newspaper pictures”); some, sadly as yet unrealized (“Cure for cancer”); and some, ironically backwards (“Government control of corporations”). But overall, it’s consoling to be reminded that things that seem wild, even radical at one moment in time– in this case, things like women’s rights and child labor laws– can, with the passage of time, become so obvious as to become human rights that we take for granted.
[TotH to Paleofuture, from whence the illustration above; via the always-excellent Next Draft]
* Yogi Berra
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As we live in the past, we might send twisted birthday greetings to August Ferdinand Möbius; he was born on this date in 1790. A mathematician and theoretical astronomer, Möbius was so important to the fields of analytic geometry, topology, and number theory that several mathematical concepts are named after him, including the Möbius configuration, the Möbius transformations, the Möbius transform, the Möbius function μ(n), and the Möbius inversion formula…
But he is best remembered, of course, as the creator of the Möbius Strip— a two-dimensional surface with only one side…. more specifically: a non-orientable two-dimensional surface with only one side when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space… It can be constructed in three dimensions: Take a rectangular strip of paper and join the two ends of the strip together so that it has a 180 degree twist. It is now possible to start at a point A on the surface and trace out a path that passes through the point which is apparently on the other side of the surface from A.
“God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world…”*
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From Yann Pineill & Nicolas Lefaucheux at Parachutes.tv, “Beauty of Mathematics.”
* Paul Dirac
“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music.”
– Betrand Russell
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As we count our blessings, we might recall that it was on this date in 1869 that the very first issue of Nature was published. Edited by astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer, the inaugural issue included articles on astronomy, plants, moths, paleontology, science teaching in schools, an obituary for Thomas Graham, and meeting notices. Lockyer took the journal’s title from a line by Wordsworth: “To the solid ground of nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye.”
Nature was at its inception part of a movement of interdisciplinary (or perhaps better said, pre-disciplinary journals), unique in drawing on a contributor base composed of progressive, and somewhat controversial scientists like Joseph Dalton Hooker, Herbert Spencer, and John Tyndall– all avid supporters of Darwin and his theory of evolution, a very fashion-forward position at the time. But while most journals have become ever-more specialized, Nature has hewed to its interdisciplinary roots– “a way of creating a sense of community among people who would otherwise be isolated from each other”– and has become pre-eminent: it was ranked the”world’s most cited” scientific publication by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports.
Nature cover, November 4, 1869
By any other name…
Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.
– Frank Capra
Can you figure out these movie titles?
These and other mathematical mysteries at Spiked Math‘s Movie Math Quiz. (For answers to the examples above, click on the clues… but do browse further.)
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As we wonder if this is what “transitive” means, we might send burnished birthday greetings to Maxwell Perkins; he was born on this date in 1884. Probably the most famous literary editor of all time, Perkins discovered, assisted, promoted, and/or otherwise mentored many of the most important American writers of the first half of the Twentieth Century including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Erskine Caldwell, Edmund Wilson, James Jones, Vance Bourjaily, and (especially) Thomas Wolfe.
Everything goes better with sharks…
Sharks!
Given the successes of “Shark Week” and Sharknado, it’s a sure bet that Hollywood will move to remake the classics to feature those creepily-cartilaginous predators. See what to expect at Sharks Make Movies Better.
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As we decide that it isn’t yet, perhaps, safe to go back into the water, we might might send carefully-calculated birthday greetings to Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri; he was born on this date in 1667. A Jesuit priest and Scholastic philosopher, Saccheri is probably best remembered for his attempt to disprove the fifth postulate of Euclid (“through any point not on a given line, one and only one line can be drawn that is parallel to the given line”). In fact, Saccheri’s thinking closely mirrored that of Omar Khayyám’s 11th Century Discussion of Difficulties in Euclid (Risâla fî sharh mâ ashkala min musâdarât Kitâb ‘Uglîdis)– though it’s not clear that Saccheri knew the earlier work.
In any case, Saccheri’s Euclides ab omni naevo vindicatus (Euclid Freed of Every Flaw, 1733) helped lay the foundation for what we now call Non-Euclidean Geometry.
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