Sol Lederman is "Inspired by Math"

Sol Lederman announced a series of podcasted interviews...

...with people who are inspired by math and how they're helping others to be inspired.

The first interview with Keith Devlin ( Senior Researcher at CSLI ) is available here.

Does your study / profession matches your personality ?

Just found out that my personality resembles the fictional characters George Smiley, John le Carre's master spy but alas also Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes' nemesis or the worst of all Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs). Real characters in my personality group aren't much better: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Rumsfeld, Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama. - I wouldn't have said that I look like any of them, not counting George Smiley. The description of the personality however is correct.
I am an INTJ type. The predicted job matched too: computer programming. Lots of scientists have this profile as well. Famous ones are Stephen Hawking and Isaac Newton.

Do the test yourself here. The test is based on 16 types originally described by Jung.

The Code - Episode 3 - Prediction ( with Marcus du Sautoy )

Just like the orbits of the planets life follows a pattern. It can be reduced to cause and effect. Everything can be represented by numbers, and thus has mathematics at his heart. Strip everything away and mathematics remains.

The Code

Beautiful TV, the BBC at it's best. Series verdict 8.5/10. Not a 10 because given previous series with Marcus du Sautoy, and the promising title "The Code", my expectations were too high. I had the idea it was mostly about physics, ( of which some say is just another branch of mathematics ).

Episode 3 starts off with a tale about Columbus, lunar tables and the moon eclipse. Given the regular movement of the planets it is possible to forecast a moon eclipse.

"The Code is such a powerful thing that I entrust my life to it" says du Sautoy. He calculates the arc of a ball which is rolled off some ramp and takes a seat close by where the ball should land. Classical mechanics is predictable.

Denmark. Flocks of starlings. A single flock can contain a million birds. The Black Sun they call them. Suprisingly flocks can be modelled mathematically.

On to America. We meet a detective with a Ph.D in mathematics hunting for serial killers. ( I would rather consult Charlie Eppes though. Charlie is an expert in -all- branches of mathematics. ) This detective said that he studied the Jack the Ripper case and worked out the address of Jack the Ripper. Not bad for a case as old as 888. My prediction is that Jack the Ripper is dead by now.

Knowing the series is part of an Open University course I am not surprised that the logistic map made an appearance. If you intend to study math at the Open University be prepared. The logistic map is hard, very hard. The logistic map is what makes mathematicians modest, humble almost. - Suppose there is a God, a creator, who used mathematics as a language in the creation of the universe. Wouldn't he/ she/ it be so clever to -secure- the creation from having it cracked from creatures like us? If you assume that then the logistic map, chaos theory, the complexity of the primes, Goedel's theorems and all that could be just firewalls.

Anyway, du Sautoy shows that we can use the logistics map to understand the dynamics of ( lemming ) populations but we won't be able to predict populations with it. Weather systems ( and I suppose stress systems related to earthquakes ) are bound in a similar manner.

New York. Patterns everywhere, of course. ( Echoes of Max Cohen? ) There seems to be a 15% rule for cities. It says that when a city doubles in size everything gets better by 15%. Then I lost it:

You have 15% more restaurants to choose from, 15% more art galleries ( .... ).

Here the producers had to show off their class, I suppose. A bit insensitive in such harsh economic times. Not good in my opinion. - The evening The Code part 3 was broadcast a friendly between England and The Netherlands was canceled. Due to class related riots in London.

High IQ

I have seen the new ape movie 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'. ( Average user rating on IMDB is 8.0, today. ) It's a fun movie really, for every member of the family, not that it's a comedy, it's an action thriller with a touch of Splice and Avatar.

To the point, this is a mathematics blog.

When the movie started to work on me I thought about the great minds of tomorrow, but still children today. Some of which may be struggling with the fact that they seem somehow 'different'. Some are lucky and are recognized as children with high IQ. But others may be entirely surrounded with average or low IQ teachers, parents and friends. The most gifted child is probably ( as in statistics ) born in India, China or Africa, which makes the chance we'll ever benefit from his or her gifst quite remote. - Again, I thought of Ramanujan. - Part of being gifted with a high IQ is waking up to it. Life is miserable when you have to live with monkeys. Although officially diagnosed with some disorder in the DSM there is nothing wrong with most middle-aged, highly sensitive, but depressed people, except that they did not wake up to their IQ.

The main character in the movie is a research scientist working for a pharmaceutical company. His father has Alzheimer's disease so that's the area he is researching. He is working on a promising drug which reached the stage for testing on apes. Something goes wrong and all test apes must be killed. One of the apes was carrying a baby and is saved and raised by people. The movie is the story of that ape, Caesar who inherited the gene modifications from his mother. Caesar physically develops as an ape but his intelligence is higher than that of any human. He is of course completely aware of his situation. Society demands Caesar is locked up with other apes. Despite his intelligence he is powerless among his peers. The first thing the apes do is humiliating him by ripping of his clothes and tearing them apart. - The most intelligent person on the planet is also the most lonely person on the planet.

I know of a group that has all sorts of programs to develop the mental capabilities of its members but the message is that you can't use them when you are on your own. Only when you are in a group of equals you can flourish and prosper. - Low IQ people bring you down, if they must by force.

The Code - Episode 2 - with Marcus du Sautoy

The Code part 2 is about shapes.

Descartes ( rediscovered by Euler ) stated that for any polyhedron the following identy holds $$F-E+V=2.$$ Where $F$ is the number of faces, $E$ is the number of edges and $V$ is the number of vertices. A tetrahedron, for example has $4$ vertices, $4$ faces and $6$ edges: $4 - 6 + 4 = 2$. One of the most beautiful and fascinating mathematical theorems I know states that this formula implies that there are only five regular polyhedra. A theorem that doesn't involve any deep topology or geometry, given $F-E+V=2$ all it takes is some number theory, i.e. solving some Diophantine equations and modular congruences.

Du Sautoy demonstrates the 2D version of the formula above in this episode. He shows that in 2D there can only be three regular lattices created from a regular polyhedron. He visits a beehive and shows how bees create lattices based on perfect pentagons. He then calculates the amount of required wax for the three possibilities and concludes that the pentagon is the best solution. "Nature is lazy", he says and is obviously part of The Code. The fascinating fact here is that nature, in the form of the bee, "knows" this, and for thousands of years. The knowledge about the pentagon and the skill to create pentagons seems encoded in the bee lifeform. Then, what is nature? And what exactly is the role of mathematics? That seem to be the questions he is trying to answer.

From there on Du Sautoy shows us more regular polyhedra in nature. Like a virus in the shape of an icosahedron.

He visits a salt mine with perfectly cube shaped crystals and using a model of the molecule explains the creation of the cube.

If you look closer to the shapes however the creations are not mathematically perfect. Are we using mathematics merely to understand nature? Or is nature driven by mathematics? Fractals are introduced to explain tree like shapes. But although close mathematically perfect fractal-type-of trees don't exist either.

Next week episode 3.

Marcus du Sautoy in the footsteps of Max Cohen

The Code, part 1 of the new BBC / Open University mathematics documentary presented by Marcus Du Sautoy is in one word excellent. Du Sautoy is on a journey, looking for the code which governs all the patterns we see in the world around us. - Pi ( The Movie ) revisited! The documentary begins almost exactly as the scene in Pi where Max Cohen leaves his flat and meets Jenna, a young girl living in the same building who likes number games. She asks 'How much is 73 divided by 22? ): Max answers with three point three, one eight, one eight, one eight, one eight, one eight, one eight, one eight, etc. until Jenna can no longer hear him. - Once Max enters the street we hear him think:

1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented through numbers. 3. If you graph the numbers of any system patterns emerge. 4. Therefore there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence. The cycles in disease epidemics, sun spot cycles, etc.

What Marcus du Sautoy does in Code is collecting evidence, much more evidence for the rules of Max.



Max was searching for a code too, I hope the ending of the series of The Code will be more uptone than Pi. We shall see, two more episodes to view. - Click on the image above to watch it if you qualify, or download a torrent from your favorite site.

Michael Schneider

Twelvealone made a comment about the Egyptian math video. The mathematician / presenter is Michael Schneider. He wrote a book called 'Constructing the Universe'. If you have seen the movie Pi, you'll recognize many similarities between Schneider's and Maximillian Cohen's views about mathematics and the physical reality. Apple Computer employs Evangelists. The mission of a Mac Evangelist is simply to disseminate the beauty of an Apple computer. Unlike teachers who teach from a position of superiority, even if they only want to help their ( engineering ) students to get through Calculus, Michael Schneider does not teach: he disseminates. He invites you to investigate the beauty of mathematics, for yourself. One of my favorite ( alternative ) radio stations is the Swedish Red Ice Radio. It turns out they interviewed him last year about his book, mathematics and so much more.



Parts 2, and following at the Red Ice Radio channel.

Announcing two new websites.

I received this message earlier today.

Hi Nilo Just to let you know I've gone live the link is http://chrisfmathsphysicsmusic.blogspot.com/ Hope you find it interesting Best wishes Chris

Go here: http://chrisfmathsphysicsmusic.blogspot.com/.

This might be the moment to 'open-up' a website in its very early beginnings. The site will change often and is going to contain my ( mathematical ) notes. Anything I ever might publish will go through there. At least, that's the idea. I don't have a domain yet, let alone a webserver so I used Opera Unite's out-of-the-box Webserver. The address is http://home.ndroock1.operaunite.com/webserver/

See also the Bookmarks page

Mandelbrot

( *** Changed YT video to a better one. *** )

Have you ever been asked "If you study mathematics then you must know a lot about fractals, right?" Wrong. Unfortunately. I have learned that understanding fractals requires -at least- knowledge of Complex Analysis ( M337 ). A student of mathematics must be patient.

Last week's mathematical news was of course the death of Benoit Mandelbrot. The magazine Math Factor published a video-lecture ( 20 min ) of him recorded February, 2010. On that page I also found this video of the Mandelbox.


Enjoy!

Searching Euler's Identity

Once more Euler's identity $e^{i\pi}+1=0$. What a search can't do...

Music of the primes

I watched another BBC mathematics documentary presented by Marcus du Satoy, called the music of the primes. Du Satoy wrote a book with the same title. ( Such a documentary is unheard of in my country The Netherlands. Too expensive, not enough viewers, I suppose. Whatever. Like there is no mathematics department in the Dutch Open University. )  It is amazing how Du Satoy can explain extremely complicated stuff to a wide audience in an entertaining way. Music of the primes is basically about the Riemann hypothesis.

Something is wrong

One million pages of new math every year.

I was in the library today where I read the book 'Letters to a young mathematician' from professor Ian Stewart. Stewart answers questions of his ( hypothetical ) niece Gem who wants to become a mathematician. If you have a question about a career in mathematics it may very well be that you will find the answer in Stewart's book. In the preface he writes that he considers the book an update to Hardy's famous book 'A mathematician's Apology'. Things changed a bit compared to Hardy's days. Where Hardy spent four hours a day on math and the rest of the day in leisure ( i.e. watching cricket ) the research mathematicians of today have 10 to 12 hour workdays doing a lot more than basic research.

Anyway, in one letter Stewart, very much part of the current mathematical elite, explains how the young mathematician should pursue for a career. First he almost apologizes for the fact that her thesis advisor will probably be someone who just got his Ph.D him/her-self ( the number of female mathematicians is growing fast as Stewart explains elsewhere ). This remark alone should be red flagged. He then explains in the same apologetical fashion that you can consider yourself lucky if you have a good teacher. Most teachers only teach because it comes with the job of researching. And a good researcher is the one with the most publications. And since there are approximately 500,000 research mathematicians worldwide this explains the creation of one million pages of new math every year. Just imagine the industry behind it.

Attacking a serious mathematical problem like the Poincare conjecture or the Riemann hypothesis may take decades of  work with only a small chance of successful completion. I think I am beginning to understand why Grigori Perelman doesn't like the establishment and vice versa.

Something is wrong.

Personal Statements

I found this site where mathematicians / students explain their choice for mathematics. ( Elsewhere on the site statements form students in other fields ) Very readable and interesting life-stories of young people.

Snippet :
"  Mathematics can, at times, be the single most frustrating subject I have ever studied, yet I love it. The euphoria of completing a particularly hard puzzle, or the sudden realisation of a particular topic clicking into place, makes the challenge and the hard work all the more worthwhile. "