Posts Tagged ‘relativity’
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.
Step Right Up!…
The rakishly-named Jen Wayne Gacy maintains what has to be one of the most unusual– and fascinating– Pinterest collections online. Your correspondent’s personal favorite: “Slideshow/Freakshow.”
Tour the netherworld at “Slideshow/Freakshow.” (And learn the lingo here.)
[TotH to Richard Kadrey’s Damn Tumbler]
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As we purchase our peek behind the curtain, we might note that it was on this date in 1923 that Albert Eistein demonstrated that time is relative: he delivered his Nobel Prize lecture… two years late.
Relatively speaking…
Max Fleischer and his lady love (source)
Max Fleischer and his brother Dave were giants in the history of animation. The most significant competition to Walt Disney in the formative years of the art, they created Betty Boop and Koko the Clown, and brought Bimbo, Popeye, Superman, and Gulliver’s Travels to the screen. Along the way, they invented a number of technologies and techniques that have become essential to the form.
Rotoscope by Max Fleischer, patent drawing from 1914
But possibly the the strangest– and arguably the most wonderful– thing they ever did was this 1923 short film blithely and elegantly explaining the concept of relativity:
TotH to Curiosity Counts.
As we await the animators of our new paradigms, we might wish a minimal(ist) birthday to Philip Glass, award-winning composer and first cousin once removed of (R)D friend and hero Ira Glass; Philip was born on this date in 1937.
Playing the odds…
A P value is the probability of an observed (or more extreme) result arising only from chance.
It’s science’s dirtiest secret: The “scientific method” of testing hypotheses by statistical analysis stands on a flimsy foundation. Statistical tests are supposed to guide scientists in judging whether an experimental result reflects some real effect or is merely a random fluke, but the standard methods mix mutually inconsistent philosophies and offer no meaningful basis for making such decisions. Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.
Replicating a result helps establish its validity more securely, but the common tactic of combining numerous studies into one analysis, while sound in principle, is seldom conducted properly in practice.
Experts in the math of probability and statistics are well aware of these problems and have for decades expressed concern about them in major journals. Over the years, hundreds of published papers have warned that science’s love affair with statistics has spawned countless illegitimate findings. In fact, if you believe what you read in the scientific literature, you shouldn’t believe what you read in the scientific literature.
“There is increasing concern,” declared epidemiologist John Ioannidis in a highly cited 2005 paper in PLoS Medicine, “that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.”
Ioannidis claimed to prove that more than half of published findings are false, but his analysis came under fire for statistical shortcomings of its own. “It may be true, but he didn’t prove it,” says biostatistician Steven Goodman of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health. On the other hand, says Goodman, the basic message stands. “There are more false claims made in the medical literature than anybody appreciates,” he says. “There’s no question about that.”
Nobody contends that all of science is wrong, or that it hasn’t compiled an impressive array of truths about the natural world. Still, any single scientific study alone is quite likely to be incorrect, thanks largely to the fact that the standard statistical system for drawing conclusions is, in essence, illogical. “A lot of scientists don’t understand statistics,” says Goodman. “And they don’t understand statistics because the statistics don’t make sense”…
What’s one to make of the stream of “eat this,” “avoid that” studies surfacing nearly daily? It’s an odds-on bet that readers will find out in the complete Science News story, “Odds Are, It’s Wrong.”
As we tell Monty that we’ll take what’s behind Door #2, we might recall that it was on this date in 1905 that Albert Einstein kicked off “Annus Mirabilis” with the publication of the first of his four epoch-making papers in Annalen der Physik— this one, proposing energy “quanta”– thus kicking off the year in which he reinvented physics and our understanding of reality.
The second of those papers, on Brownian motion, was the very first work of “statistical physics.”
Einstein, dressed for the patent office, 1905
Happy Náw-Rúz! This date in 1844 was the first day of the first year of the Bahai calendar.
The most unkindest cut…
Your correspondent has long been haunted by a question of practical fairness: Suppose I order a pizza to share with a friend, and then a distracted waiter cuts the pie off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if my friend and I take turns to take adjacent slices, will we get equal shares by the time we’ve finished the pizza– and if not, who will get more?
Happily, this question also bothered mathematicians Rick Mabry and Paul Deiermann, who set out to answer it. And, as the New Scientist reports, answer it they did. Readers can henceforth consult this handy diagram…
The full story is here.
(And for info on how to cut a bagel so that it forms [in effect] a Möbius strip, see “Mathematically Correct Breakfast.”)
As we reach for the crushed red pepper, we might recall that today’s a relative-ly good day for a pizza party, as it was on this date in 1900 that German physicist Max Planck presented and published his study of the effect of radiation on a “black-body” substance (introducing what we’ve come to know as the Planck Postulate), and the quantum theory of modern physics– and for that matter, Twentieth Century modernity– were born.
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