March 31, 2004
Mathematicians Predict Patterns in Fingerprints, CactiUA graduate student Michael Kuecken developed a mathematical model that can reproduce fingerprint patterns, while UA graduate student Patrick Shipman created a mathematical model to explain the arrangement of repeated units in various plants. Shipman's report on his work will be published in an upcoming issue of Physical Review Letters. “What I like about this research is the interplay between math and biology. It is actually quite difficult, because the disciplines require a somewhat different mindset and biology is notoriously bewildering and full of detail,” Kuecken said. “In a way, dealing with this problem was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle of facts. I had to try out different things and could use math, and sometimes common sense, to see if the pieces actually fit. Shipman’s model, like Kuecken’s, also took into account stresses that influenced ridge formation. In plants, forces acting in multiple directions result in complex patterns. For example, when buckling occurs in three different directions, all three ridges will appear together and form a hexagonal pattern. “I’ve looked at cacti all my life, I really like them, and I’d really like to understand them,” Shipman said. To study these patterns, Shipman looked at the stickers on a cactus or florets on a flower. Shipman found that cactus stickers predicatably align in spiral patterns. From his model, Shipman found that the initial curvature of a plant near its growth tip influences whether it will form ridges or hexagons. He found that plants with a flat top, or less curved top, such as saguaro cacti, will always form ridges and tend not to have Fibonacci sequences. Plants that have a high degree of curvature will produce hexagonal configurations, such as those in pinecones, and the number of spirals will always be numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. Newell says that Shipman's mathematical model demonstrates that the shapes chosen by nature are those that take the least energy to make. “Of all possible shapes you can have, what nature picked minimizes the energy in the plant.” Mathematicians Predict Patterns in Fingerprints, Cacti |
March 31, 2004
MASTER NUMBERS AND 'THE WORLD WILL BE YOUR OYSTERLEE MACKAY It's a subject most people love to hate. When asked what their least favourite subject is or was at school, many people will answer "maths". But experts say when children master the subject the world can be their oyster. More than 60 pupils from across the city were today taking part in a maths challenge which aims to encourage enthusiasm in the subject. Hosted by Aberdeen University, the second regional Enterprising Mathematics Challenge Competition involved primary six and seven pupils from 22 city schools. They were competing in a variety of mathematical games at the university's Elphinstone Hall. Helen Martin, lecturer and event organiser, believes it is important to get children interested in maths at a young age. "In order for children to take maths further in university they must have the ability to think outside the box. "With maths, the world can be your oyster. The police use maths all the time to calculate road speeds and stopping distances. MASTER NUMBERS AND 'THE WORLD WILL BE YOUR OYSTER |
March 31, 2004
Cowbell Maths Contest: Stakeholders Seek More CompetitionsDaily Champion SECOND and final stage of this year's Cowbell National Secondary School Mathematics examination has been held with stakeholders in the education sector challenging corporate organisations to introduce similar competition in other subjects, especially English Language. The examination which held penultimate Saturday in Lagos attracted, from across the country, 74 junior and senior secondary school students, their teachers as well as other stakeholders. For Miss Sadipe Jololo Lami of Adesoye College, Offa, Kwara State, the March 20 examination, the frills and thrills that followed, were beyond the tip of the tongue to explain. The introduction of the Mathematics competition, she said, was timely, noting that Nigeria was 37th in the 40-nation evaluation carried out by the International Evaluation Assessment on Science and Mathematics. Nigeria is backward technologically now. Mathematics is the language of science and technology. A good scientist must be well grounded in Mathematics. Those who know Mathematics often end up as scientists and engineers. Cowbell Maths Contest: Stakeholders Seek More Competitions |
March 30, 2004
The Dick Staub Interview: William Dembski's RevolutionWilliam A. Dembski has been one of the leading voices of the Intelligent Design movement. He is an associate research professor at Baylor University and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. He is also the executive director of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design. Dr. Dembski has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. Dembski earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, an M.S. in statistics, and a Ph.D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. What is intelligent design, and how did you become a believer and an advocate for the idea? What intelligent design does is it looks for signs of intelligence. Where it gets controversial is when it starts looking for signs of intelligence in biological systems. What makes it controversial is that if there is actual intelligence or design behind biology, it means that the intelligence is not an evolved intelligence. It's not an intelligence that's the result of blind purposeless material processes, as the Darwinists tell us. That's really what's at stake there. I'm a mathematician, not a biologist. But in the late '80s, at the height of the chaos theory craze, I attended a conference on randomness at Ohio State University. The point of the conference was to try to understand the nature of randomness. But the conference concluded that we don't know what randomness is, or the way we get at randomness is by knowing what randomness is not. What would happen repeatedly was you'd find something with a pure random but then you'd find the pattern in it. Randomness was always a provisional designation until we found the pattern or design in it. I became something of an expert in the study of randomness, wrote on this, and from there got into the whole question of what are the patterns that we use to defeat randomness and infer design? And that set me on a trajectory I've been on for about 15 years now. The Dick Staub Interview: William Dembski's Revolution |
March 30, 2004
Set to Do Lagos ProudGaniyu Obaaro The has her eyes already trained on the national finals of this year's edition of the National Mathematical Centre/Petroleum Technology Fund (NMC/PTDP) competitive examination to be held in April in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory. Having emerged as the best in Lagos State, 14-year-old Miss Oriaifo Inibokun Stacey has vowed to again excel in Abuja. Already, the Edo State-born SS1 student of Queens College, Lagos has begun fine-tuning her strategies, including consulting relevant mathematical books to beat others expected to be drawn from the 36 states of the federation and Abuja, at the national finals. Represented by Mr. Akin Bolodeoku, an official in the ministry, the commissioner said the state government has been encouraging the study of Mathematics and other science subjects through funding, provision of materials, organisation of workshops/seminar among others. He said Lagos State has been excelling in both national and international science and mathematics competitions in the last four and a half years. According to Miss Iyabo Samuel of Government College, Agege, Mathematics is very crucial in the study of sciences in particular. "Mathematics is a subject you cannot avoid," she said. As Miss Oriaifo sharpens her learning skills towards the national finals in Abuja, who would ill-agree that Lagos State and Queens College are set for another glory. Set to Do Lagos Proud |
March 30, 2004
Proven Method of Bone Analysis May Clarify Human OriginsTEMPE, Ariz., March 30 (AScribe Newswire) -- Bones, it is said, tell tales, but in the case of the bones of hominids or human ancestors the story has become complex and convoluted, as paleoanthropologists try to decipher relationships between a host of similar species with subtly shifting characteristics in a spotty fossil record. A novel method has been developed that may prove to be a valuable tool in clarifying the picture. In the March 30, 2004 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a form of three-dimensional mathematical analysis is used to quantify bone characteristics of humans and eight species and subspecies of great apes and to arrive at a clear family tree that defines ancestral relationships down to the subspecies level. The analysis relies solely on bone shape but its results agree with genetic analyses. In the paper, authors Charles A. Lockwood of the Department of Anthropology at University College London (formerly of Arizona State University), William H. Kimbel of the Institute of Human Origins and Department of Anthropology at ASU, and John M. Lynch of ASU's Barrett Honors College apply a methodology, known as geometric morphometric analysis, to shape data from the temporal bones of humans and eight other species, including chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The application of the method was developed under a National Science Foundation grant and the methodology was previously outlined in the December 2002 issue of the Journal of Anatomy. "In this work we aimed to link modern quantitative methods, which are undergoing something of a revolution, with the analysis of a part of the skull we were interested in for a variety of reasons," said Lockwood. Kimbel adds, "The temporal bone has long been thought to have taxonomic and phylogenetic significance and seemed like an ideal target. Because of its unique place in the skull, its shape says a lot about a species." The complex shape of the temporal bone is influenced by many other anatomical features, including brain size, jaw size, hearing and posture. "One of the great things about this kind of technique is that you know if you do the analysis right and you choose the right landmarks, you are exhaustively capturing all the data that exists for that bone," said Lynch. "Intuitively, you can tell apart the temporal bone of a human and the temporal bone of a gorilla, but the beauty for us is that we found that our mathematical formulations were mapping those common-sense intuitive differences in a beautiful, quantitative way." "The fact that you can quantify the topography of the bones gives you the ability then to approach the differences both within and among groups statistically," said Kimbel. "This is the big leap," he said. "It's finding a quantitative way to express the variation that we see and then having the ability both to analyze that variation with statistical robustness, as well as deriving phylogenetic information from it. Our next challenge will be to apply the method to the fossils themselves, and we're anticipating some fascinating results." Proven Method of Bone Analysis May Clarify Human Origins |
March 30, 2004
Bulgarian Boys Brain-Gain in JapanSix Bulgarian teenagers made the country's name echo in world media headlines last July. The high-school boys won the International Mathematics Olympiad, the oldest of all science Olympiads. The six outweighed 457 math hotshots from 84 countries, including the US, Russia and China. Five of the Bulgarians - Kaloyan Slavov, Rumen Zarev, Iliya Tsekov, Alexander Lishkov and Rossen Kralev - study at the math high school in Sofia. The other contender came from Bulgaria's second city of Plovdiv. The Olympiad's paper consists of six problems; the contestants have 4.5 hours to solve 3 problems on each of the two examination days. The problems chosen are from various areas of secondary school mathematics - geometry, algebra, number theory, and combinatorics. They require no knowledge of higher mathematics. However, finding the solutions requires exceptional ingenuity and mathematical ability. Bulgarian Boys Brain-Gain in Japan |
March 30, 2004
Two CU math teams win in international competitionTwo University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduate teams have been named Outstanding Winners in the prestigious Mathematical Contest in Modeling sponsored by the Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications, CU announced Monday. The accomplishment is bigger than it sounds, as only 11 Outstanding Winners were named among a field of 742 teams, according to a CU-Boulder press release. This year's Mathematical Contest in Modeling was held over four days in February. Each team worked on one of three open-ended applied problems, formulating a mathematical model with which to analyze the problem, and then drawing conclusions and submitting a written report. The winners were announced last week by the consortium. Two CU math teams win in international competition |
March 29, 2004
Public raising cellphone sound barRACHEL ROSS Cellphone users have heard it all: the sporadic clicks and pops, the swelling hum of traffic in the background and the eerie echo of words already spoken. Some callers spend hundreds of dollars on a new phone, hoping for better sound. Others switch from one network to another, in the quest for clarity. Unfortunately, solving the problem isn't that simple. The sound quality of a cellphone call isn't determined by any one factor. A variety of things influence the acoustics of each call, including the network, software on the phone and the hardware components inside. The Framingham, Mass., company makes software that runs on cellular networks to help improve the acoustics by eliminating echo and reducing background noise. Their Studio Sound software (and the related hardware) runs on many cellular networks including AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular. The necessary components are installed at telephone switching centres. To lessen background noise, the software uses mathematical formulas to isolate spoken words from the rest of the sound picked up by a cellphone's microphone. "In normal speech, there's sort of three key frequencies that have a known mathematical relationship," said Ryan. "It's all related to the mathematical model of the larynx." The software seeks out those key frequencies, while lowering the volume on other frequencies. "We intentionally leave a little bit of background noise there so the listener has some flavour of the caller's surroundings," Ryan said. Public raising cellphone sound bar |
March 28, 2004
Student awarded graduate moneyBy Katie Byard Strecker, a senior at the College of Wooster, recently landed an extremely generous fellowship worth more than $200,000. The six-year fellowship -- one of only seven of this type given out this year -- will pay her graduate school tuition plus a $16,000 annual stipend for living expenses. College officials are almost giddy over the award, especially because it's the second time in two years a Wooster student or graduate has received one of the prestigious fellowships from the National Physical Science Consortium. Strecker, a 21-year-old from Marietta, said it was exciting to know she will be able to attend a prestigious school and not have to worry about the cost. She plans to study computer science at one of three schools: the University of Maryland, the University of Illinois or North Carolina State. At Wooster, she is majoring in computer science and math. Student awarded graduate money |
March 28, 2004
NUMBER CRUNCHERSBy WHITNEY PASTOREK March 28, 2004 -- Math, according to popular wisdom, is hard. Also, it's boring - and, at advanced levels, fairly unrelated to real life. Addition and subtraction are one thing, but if you're like most Americans, you couldn't wait to graduate from high school so you could put away the protractor and compass for good. Well, math, meet your savior: In his new book, "Count Down" (Houghton Mifflin, $24), National Book Award finalist Steve Olson finds a way to make the intricacies of higher mathematics palatable to all, no matter how many afternoons they spent wishing they could throw their pre-cal textbook out the window. The secret to Olson's success lies in the book's subtitle: "Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World's Toughest Math Competition." "Count Down" follows the lives of six members of the 2001 U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team. Olson tracks their progress from childhood all the way through to the 40-second annual competition, where they tested their skills against the best high school mathematicians from 83 countries around the world. "I think math competitions are more exciting and engaging than a spelling bee because of the level of creativity that's involved in solving these problems," says Olson. "The people who do well are the kids who see things that other kids don't." "Each person's life story is different," says Olson, "and they get to where they are in life by a completely different route." Every chapter highlights one kid and one problem from the competition, as well as the characteristic that made each team member particularly unique in their solution (readers are given the chance to try and solve the problems on their own, if they dare). Olson says we just need to learn to look at math in a different way. "You have to master the basics to see how beautiful some of these problems are," he says. Olson hopes that by painting an accurate portrait of the next generation of mathematicians, he can encourage more people to look at this field in the same way as sports, art, or music. He's already working towards this goal with his own children, a seventh-grader and a ninth- grader, both of whom are active mathletes. "The one thing I might hope is when they look back at the experiences they had with mathematics as children, they don't remember them as these horrific experiences," he says. NUMBER CRUNCHERS |
March 28, 2004
Solving mathematical equations? No problemBy ALISON KITT Need help figuring out the slope-intercept of an equation? Don't quite understand how to measure the height of an object by it's shadow? Maybe you can't see how a(B)-a(c)=x. For all of your mathematical needs, talk to Ann Goshert, a teacher at Riley High School. Goshert has been teaching since 1994. (That's 10 years, she taught me that!) In addition to algebra she has taught psychology, economics and special education. She studied at Purdue University and Indiana University. "I was very good in math during high school, which helps my career quite a bit. I also love my students," Goshert said. "Kids make teaching enjoyable. If you get a good group of students that know how to behave, it's really fun," Goshert says. She has two algebra classes and two pre-algebra classes, and she likes them both. She says that the kids in those classes make teaching fun. The most depressing thing to happen to her as a teacher is when students get bad test grades. "Believe it or not, teachers want kids to do well. It's really sad when I'm grading papers and kids fail," Goshert said. Solving mathematical equations? No problem |
March 28, 2004
Center right to expand opportunityThe Battle Creek Area Mathematics and Science Center provides area high school students with a rigorous, challenging academic program that not only prepares them well for college but often inspires them to explore fields to which they previously had not been exposed. Now that opportunity will be available to even more students, thanks to a decision by the center's advisory committee to allow students in outlying districts to apply when all openings are not utilized by the center's 12 member districts. It also is important that the center not lower its standards in accepting students that it feels have a special interest in and aptitude for math, science and technology. By expanding the number of students eligible to apply, the center can be assured of full enrollment without lowering the bar for admission. The math/science center has been a tremendous asset for our community ever since it opened in 1991. In addition to its high school program in which students attend the center a half-day and their home school for the other half, the center also has provided teacher training opportunities and outreach programs that have benefitted students at many levels. Center right to expand opportunity |
March 27, 2004
Teacher off the chartSebreana Domingue The students at Episcopal School of Acadiana in Cade needed a refresher Friday, said teacher Mary Lou Jumonville. “Just put your pencils down, and I want you to be able to do this mentally,” she said. In about five minutes, the students got it, and no wonder, since Jumonville is a national award-winning math teacher who won the 2003 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. Jumonville was one of 233 math and science teachers nationwide who were named finalists, along with Tim Rosamond of Iberia Middle School in New Iberia, who was a science finalist. Jumonville, who has been an educator for more than 30 years, said math is her calling. “I knew that I had a gift, and it was that I could help other people learn and understand the beauty of math,” she said. “As far back as high school, I was always the one who helped other students in math. Jumonville was nominated for the award last year and was required to submit statements about her philosophy on teaching, samples of her lesson plans, student work and a video of herself teaching. There were three teachers from Louisiana chosen as finalists in math, she said. “It is a dream,” she said. “It is an affirmation of my life’s work. ... It validates what I do.” Teacher off the chart |
March 27, 2004
High-school students flex math muscles at meetBy Janelle Frost One would think the yelling, cheering, clapping high-school students at Coastal Carolina University's campus Friday were at a sporting event - not a math contest. About 280 students from 24 S.C. schools along with teams from Tennessee and North Carolina showed their enthusiasm for math during the 25th annual CCU-Verizon math Contest. The contest is held to generate enthusiasm for mathematics and give students a chance to have fun with it, said Kevin Jenerette, math lab coordinator at CCU. "Too often students are turned off from mathematics," he said. "Mathematics is important because it leads us to think logically about things. In thinking logically, we can process information in an objective fashion." High-school students flex math muscles at meet |
March 27, 2004
Retired teacher gets forum for his passion to teach mathBy Jessica K. Smith BERLIN — Richard Charette's gift of teaching mathematics is using it in terms of everyday life, something he does himself every day. When his house was built here a year and a half ago, he used his knowledge to ensure that all the corners were perfect 90-degree angles and that every inch of carpet he ordered was used. Charette, retired math department chairman at Sheehan High School in Wallingford, will share his knowledge and teaching methods with an international audience this summer at the 10th International Congress of Mathematics Education in Copenhagen, Denmark. The purpose of the conference is to explain the most efficient and meaningful ways to teach mathematics, Charette said. That was the main reason he wanted to participate in the July 4 to 11 conference. "It's really exciting I get to do this and meet people in all different venues," said Charette, a former South Meriden resident. "We're dealing with something very abstract and trying to make it real." Charette has presented at more than 200 workshops in Connecticut, Massachusetts and nationally, but this will be his first international conference. One of Charette's favorite lessons looks at the use of the Egyptian surveying technique to give context to the Pythagorean theorem. "The Missing Link between Pythagoras and King Tut," the first of two teacher instructional books Charette has written, deals with this topic. He plans to use this lesson as part of his Copenhagen presentation. The method used by the Egyptians was simple. They used only a rope, divided equally by 12 knots, Charette said. The surveying team would create a right angle with the rope to define a corner by counting out three knots and holding the third knot in a stone pillar. Another team member would then walk four knots toward the rising sun and a third member would connect the end of the five-knot segment with the beginning of the three-knot segment. "Anything done in Egypt, they would have a rope to do it," Charette said. Their work was so accurate, the margin of error would be around 0.1 percent every time. "I like the whole idea of hooking (students) with the reality of how things have been." Retired teacher gets forum for his passion to teach math |
March 26, 2004
Division baffles her no longerBy LAURA GIOVANELLI All those long numbers, housed under a menacing division sign. Problem-solving that didn't solve anything. Math -- really, why did you need it in the real world? Maybe her fifth-grade teacher didn't mean to be cruel, but it didn't make Heather Godine feel any better. "Don't worry about it," her teacher said. "You're just a girl. You're not really going to need math." Godine was thinking back to that fifth-grade frustration when she designed a math class for seniors at Central York High School. Sold to prospective students as "everything you never got to in the back of your math books," her math analysis is a mix of statistics, probability, finance and other math they're likely to find in college classes. It is just one of the three math courses at Central York the national award-winning math teacher instructs. Godine was one of 95 middle and high school math and science teachers from across the country feted on Capitol Hill, at the White House and at the Smithsonian during a celebration for Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching last week in Washington, D.C. Division baffles her no longer |
March 26, 2004
The new age of informationBy William Dembski AT THE TIME OF THE SCOPES TRIAL, and for the remainder of the 20th century, science was wedded to a materialistic conception of nature. The architects of modern science, from Rene Descartes to Isaac Newton, had proposed a world of unthinking material objects ruled by natural laws. Because these scientists were theists, the rule of natural law was for them not inviolable-God could, and from time to time did, invade the natural order, rearrange material objects, and even produce miracles of religious significance. But such divine acts were gratuitous insertions into a material world that was capable of carrying on quite nicely by itself. This materialist conception of the world came under pressure in the 1990s. Scientists started asking whether information might not be the fundamental entity underlying physical reality. For instance, mathematician Keith Devlin mused whether information could perhaps be regarded as "a basic property of the universe, alongside matter and energy (and being ultimately interconvertible with them)." Origin-of-life researchers like Manfred Eigen increasingly saw the problem of the origin of life as the problem of generating biologically significant information. And physicist Paul Davies speculated about information replacing matter as the "primary stuff," therewith envisioning the resolution of age-old problems, such as the mind-body problem. Thus he remarked, "If matter turns out to be a form of organized information, then consciousness may not be so mysterious after all." The new age of information |
March 26, 2004
Maths 'Nobel' awardedMARK PEPLOW The Abel Prize, often described as a Nobel Prize for maths, has been awarded to two mathematicians for unifying swathes of mathematical theories that were once thought to be unrelated. Sir Michael Atiyah and Isadore Singer worked together to create something called index theory, which helps to bring together branches of maths from topology to geometry. Their work can be described as a tool that helps scientists work out how many solutions there are to problems they are trying to unpick - such as how heat flows, or how an object moves. "It is basically a formula that counts the number of solutions to another equation," says Atiyah. "This theory is now a cornerstone of maths; it is one of the most fundamental results of the last 50 years," says Elmer Rees, a colleague of Atiyah's at Edinburgh University. "It was as if an archaeologist had discovered exactly the same patterns on tombs in completely different parts of the world, proving that some underlying civilization had carved them all," says Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at Oxford University. Maths 'Nobel' awarded |
March 25, 2004
Peru's precious heritage under threatThey don't look much from the ground. But these are the Nasca Lines: one of Peru's top tourist attractions. These giant figures that are etched in the desert are so large they can only fully be appreciated from the sky. Every year around 80,000 people fly over them, marvelling at images like the monkey with its curly tail or the delicately-carved hummingbird. Nobody knows exactly why the Nasca people carved hundreds of lines and dozens of figures over 1,000 years ago, but there has been much speculation. German mathematician Maria Reich spent half a century protecting the site, which she believed was a giant astronomical calendar. Peru's precious heritage under threat |
March 25, 2004
Solving the Puzzle of Mars' Spiral IcecapsThe spiral troughs of Mars' polar ice caps have been called the most enigmatic landforms in the solar system. The deep canyons spiraling out from Red Planet’s North and South poles cover hundreds of miles. No other planet has such structures. A new model of trough formation suggests that heating and cooling alone are sufficient to form the unusual patterns. Previous explanations had focused on alternate melting and refreezing cycles but also required wind or shifting ice caps. "I applied specific parameters that were appropriate to Mars and out of that came spirals that were not just spirals, but spirals that had exactly the shape we see on Mars." said Jon Pelletier, an assistant professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "They had the right spacing, they had the right curvature, they had the right relationship to one another." Pelletier, a geomorphologist who studies landforms on Earth such as sand dunes and river channels, has a fondness for natural patterns that are regularly spaced. Spirals fit the bill, and while perusing a book on mathematical patterns in biology, he was struck by the spiral shape formed by slime molds. He wondered whether the mathematical equation that described how the slime mold grew could also be applied to geological processes. "There's a recipe for getting spirals to form," he said. So he tried it out, using information that described the situation on Mars. Pelletier said the differential melting and refreezing is the key to the formation of Mars' spiral troughs. So he put mathematical descriptions of the heating and cooling cycles into the spiral-generating equation and ran computer simulations to predict what would occur over thousands of such cycles. He did not include wind or movement of polar ice caps in his model. The computer made patterns that match what's seen on Mars, even down to the imperfections in the spirals. Solving the Puzzle of Mars' Spiral Icecaps |
March 25, 2004
Remarkable Jewish Persons to Foster Pride in YouthROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia - Another club joined the list of popular programs carried out by the Jewish charity organization 'Chesed Sholom Ber' of Rostov-on-Don: The 'Remarkable Jews' Club ' held its first meeting on March 21st. A well-known teacher, Emiliy Mazin, who recently celebrated his 86th birthday, was the guest of honor for the club's first meeting. His former students gathered to pay tribute to one of the well known mathematics teachers in Rostov. His achievements number among those listed in the book "Science of the Don Region in Faces". A graduate of the Rostov University of Physics and Mathematics, and a World War Two veteran, he encouraged the development of and brought out the talent in children, who proved their capacities in numerous mathematics competitions. Community members and their guests read poems and shared warm words with their dear mentor, who devoted 60 years of his life to teaching. Remarkable Jewish Persons to Foster Pride in Youth |
March 25, 2004
Autism: What's Sex Got to do With ItBy Robert Kunzig Low-empathizing, high-systemizing: That, in a nutshell, is Baron-Cohen's theory of what characterizes autism. Those traits span the autism spectrum, from people who are mute and unable to function to people who find a niche in society. Moreover, Baron-Cohen's theory embeds this autism spectrum firmly in a much larger two-dimensional continuum--one that includes all of us. The essential difference between men and women, according to Baron-Cohen, is that women are better at empathizing and men at systemizing--on average, he stresses. There are plenty of male brains in female bodies, and vice versa. There are even female autistics, but there are many more male ones: In Baron-Cohen's theory, autism is a case of the "extreme male brain." In The Essential Difference, before getting to his extreme-male-brain theory of autism, Baron-Cohen combs the psychological literature for evidence that normal sex differences in empathizing and systemizing are real and rooted in biology. He expected this claim to be controversial and was surprised and a little irritated when he read, "Didn't we always know this? Didn't our grandmothers tell us this?" Proving with scientific data that sex differences in behavior are innate is notoriously difficult. But Baron-Cohen, understandably enough, spares his popular audience the data. Indeed, the conclusions alone do have a familiar ring. Girls like dolls, boys like trucks. Girls like to gossip, boys like to roughhouse. Girls are more verbal, boys are more spatial, right through the SATs. Girls attack one another indirectly and verbally (which requires them to know how their victim feels). Boys are direct and physical, and when they reach manhood they are far more likely to commit murder--"the ultimate in lack of empathy," as Baron-Cohen puts it. On the other hand, men are also far more likely to be mathematicians, physicists or engineers, as well as to be better at throwing or catching balls. Those things are all examples of systemizing, according to Baron-Cohen, by which he means "the drive to understand a system and to build one." He defines a system as anything that takes an input and transforms it into an output according to some rule. For instance, a baseball's trajectory depends in a predictable way on where the pitcher places his fingers--so it's a system. Baron-Cohen's empathizing-systemizing dichotomy is far broader than the spatial-verbal one that has long been a feature of sex-difference research. Autism: What's Sex Got to do With It |
March 25, 2004
Atiyah and Singer share Abel PrizeThe Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced the awarding of the Abel Prize for 2004 on Thursday. The NOK 6 million (about 750,000 euro) prize will go jointly to Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, University of Edinburgh, and Isadore M. Singer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for their index theorem. "Its authors, both jointly and individually, have been instrumental in repairing a rift between the worlds of pure mathematics and theoretical particle physics, initiating a cross-fertilization which has been one of the most exciting developments of the last decades," the Academy said in a press release. Atiyah and Singer share Abel Prize |
March 25, 2004
British Mathematician Shares PrizeSir Michael Atiyah, regarded as one of the finest mathematicians of the last century, today shared the Norwegian Abel Prize with American Isadore Singer. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded the £480,000 prize to them “for their discovery and proof of the index theorem, bringing together topology, geometry and analysis, and their outstanding role in building new bridges between mathematics and theoretical physics. Sir Michael, 75, of Edinburgh University and Singer, 79, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed what is now called the Atiyah-Singer theorem about 40 years ago, the academy said in its citation. British Mathematician Shares Prize |
March 25, 2004
College offers variety of talksLake Forester Lake Forest College has a variety of speakers on tap for April. The Lake Forest College Math and Computer Science department will present three math colloquiums during the month. Distinguished speakers will discuss various topics of applied mathematics. The public is invited to attend free of charge. Each colloquium will be held from 4 p.m. -5 p.m. in Young Hall, Room 111, located on the College's Middle Campus. Refreshments will be served prior to the presentations. On April 5, Edward Packel, the Ernest H. Volwiler Professor of Mathematics at Lake Forest, will speak on "Projectile Motion with Resistance, Experimental Mathematics, and the Lambert W. Function." On April 14, visiting professor Jerry Bona, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, will discuss "Solitons and Sand Bars: Mathematics on the Beach." On April 19, Dr. David Ash of Real Time Agents Inc. will lecture on "Real Time Mathematics: Sophisticated Techniques for Trading in the Financial Markets." James L. Wescoat, Jr., the 2004 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar at Lake Forest College, will present a lecture titled "India's Taj Mahal: Its Waterworks and Gardens" on April 8 at 7:30 p.m. in McCormick Auditorium, located in the Johnson Science Center on the College's Middle Campus. The public is welcome to attend free of charge. Based on his experience as a researcher and advisor on waterworks conservation at the Taj Mahal, Westcoat's presentation will touch on the aesthetic, scientific and cultural aspects of water at the Taj Mahal. Currently a professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana, Wescoat has published widely on water resource management and environmental policy, water in environmental design, and landscape heritage in South Asia. College offers variety of talks |
March 24, 2004
Stevens Selected As One of Nation's Top Mathematics EducatorsPresident Bush has announced that Grundy County High School mathematics teacher Samantha Stevens has been honored with the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, the nation's highest commendation of its kind. Mrs. Stevens traveled to Washington, D.C. last week for an awards ceremony. While there, she met with education leaders, and participated in a series of professional development activities. "I am truly excited," says Stevens, who is Tennessee's only presidential award recipient in the field of mathematics and one of only 95 teachers nationwide to be recognized with a 2003 presidential award. All awardees for 2003 are 7th - 12th grade teachers. Kindergarten and elementary school teachers are eligible for the 2004 presidential awards. "The most challenging aspect of teaching is trying to reach the needs of all your students," says Stevens. "You have to use a variety of techniques, technology, hands-on activities and peer tutoring, to name a few. You really have-to use all different styles of teaching to reach different learners." At the beginning of each year, Samantha assigns her students a project that allows them to go to the Internet and take a hemispheric brain dominance test, the results of which give her an idea how each student learns. Analyzing the test results gives Samantha an insight into class preparation, helping her present steps and objectives tailored to her students' learning strengths. She tries to help students realize how to learn and how to help strengthen their weaknesses, too. "In anything you do, you have to start a curiosity," says Stevens. "The learning has to be an interactive approach and it have to be fun or they're not necessarily going to be willing to participate. When students see teachers get excited, students get involved. If you spark their curiosity, they will want to learn. It's addictive." "You don't go into teaching for the pay, you go into it for the adventure," says Stevens. "Everyday is a new adventure, and it's never boring. I teach because I love working with children. The reward doesn't come in monetary units, it comes when former students come back and say thank you. That is a true reward." Stevens Selected As One of Nation's Top Mathematics Educators |
March 24, 2004
Fun, by numbersBy Jay Hardwig Last Thursday, just after sunset, I got in my car, leaving behind the wife, the kids, and the first round of the NCAA hoops tournament, and drove across town to attend a math lecture. And I did it of my own free will. Now that may not be your idea of fun, and truth told, it’s not mine either. But UNCA was hosting John Conway, famous math guy, and promised that his talk would be geared to the general audience.” As your resident wide-ranging earnest affable fearless topic-hungry A&E columnist, I thought it was important to get out and report on the lecture. Yep, folks, it was time to review a math show. The warm-up act was positively staid. On an overhead projector, the following words greeted the arriving fans: In the sequence 1, 4, 75, 28, 8 ... what are the next few terms? Before I had time to work that one out — I would have needed at least four years and some graduate coursework — the star of the show ambled to the front of the room and greeted the adoring crowd. John Conway is widely known for his work in number theory, group theory, game theory, knot theory, coding theory, and tilings (there was no word on bathtub installation). He started by giving the answer to his warm-up problem (56 and 375, naturally), and explained that there were just seven groups of order in 375, and that 375 is the smallest number with seven groups, and I can tell you right now that made me feel a lot better, just knowing that. “You’re a bunch of dummies!” Dummies we might have been, but at the end it was Dr. Conway who was down on his knees, tearing up a plastic grocery bag with his teeth. (I kid you not. I’ve been to a lot of rock-n-roll shows, but rarely have I seen anything so primal. The bag was a prop for the tangle demonstration, and he needed to tear it apart for the grand finale. Apparently he left his scissors at home.) In the end, I’ll admit, the math show was rather fun, even if it was a cerebral sort of fun. It was a free show, I got home early, and my eardrums didn’t throb the next morning. I’ll admit that I didn’t understand much, but I didn’t understand much the last time I saw Bob Dylan either, and I liked that show too. Well done, Dr. C. The Great Gordo sez: four stars. Fun, by numbers |
March 24, 2004
Four foreign experts receive Chinese science, technology awardAmerican mathematician Shing-TungYau, German economist Juergen Voegele, Japanese medical scientist Yutaka Mizushima and Italian entrepreneur Elio Matacena received Wednesday the Chinese governmental award for international scientific and technological cooperation. A noted Harvard professor, Shing-Tung Yau solved two important academic problems, the Calabi Conjecture and Positive Mass Conjecture. The Calabi-Yau Manifold, named after one of his most distinguished works, has been proved very vital in theoretical physics and mathematics. In 1982, Yau, became the first Chinese American to win a Fields Medal, which was regarded as the Nobel Prize in mathematics. Four foreign experts receive Chinese science, technology award |
March 24, 2004
First Evan C Thompson Professor for Excellence in Teaching: Dr. DeTurckProvost Robert Barchi announced that Mathematics Professor Dennis DeTurck has been named to the first Evan C Thompson Endowed Term Professorship for Excellence in Teaching. Wharton alumnus Evan Thompson, '64, pledged $1 million in November to endow a professorship that recognizes teaching excellence. "Dennis is a terrific scholar and a beloved teacher," said Dr. Barchi. "He embodies the traits that define this new endowed professorship, including curricular innovation; an enduring record of superior teaching skills and the capacity to consistently inspire students. We're so pleased the committee found such a deserving first recipient. I also want to express my deepest gratitude to Mr. Thompson for his generosity in establishing this endowment." Dr. DeTurck has received numerous awards and honors including the Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching (2003); the Mathematical Association of America's Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished Teaching (2002); and the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (1991). "Penn is an exciting and challenging place to teachbecause even in the role of Constructor' you wake up every day excited to learn more from students and colleagues," Dr. DeTurck said. "So I feel especially honored and grateful to be designated the first Evan Thompson Professor." First Evan C Thompson Professor for Excellence in Teaching: Dr. DeTurck |
March 24, 2004
Deriving the Structure of NumbersIvars Peterson Over the centuries, mathematicians have invented a variety of tools for probing the structure of integers, as they search for patterns and relationships among primes and composites. Recently, a novel mathematical function called the number derivative has come into play. The number derivative "provides a different context from which to view many topics of number theory, especially those concerning prime numbers," says Linda Westrick. "The complex patterns which arise from its simple definition make it interesting and worthy of study." A high school senior at Maggie L. Walker Governor's School in Richmond, Va., Westrick placed fourth in this year's Intel Science Talent Search with a project that involved a detailed study of the intriguing properties of the number derivative. Depending on the starting integer, successive number derivatives can behave in surprising ways. The derivatives of 99 increase without bound, for example. In other cases, the values change erratically, going up or down at various points. The study of the number derivative has proved to be remarkably rich. "Many unsolved problems of number theory can be posed in the context of the number derivative," Westrick says. "Whether I'm proving theorems, designing robots, or inventing new math, my goal is the same: to create something beautiful," she adds. "I hope to add to the beauty and simplicity of existing theories and create beautiful math of my own. I hope to inspire others by what I create." Deriving the Structure of Numbers |
March 23, 2004
Health Discovery Corporation Announces Agreement with the University of Miami for Biomarker and Pathway Discovery in AIDS Related DementiaHealth Discovery Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: HDVY - News) today announced the signing of an Agreement with The University of Miami to use Health Discovery Corporations proprietary and patent protected Fractal Genomics Modeling (FGM) techniques to identify new patterns of biomarkers in AIDS Related Dementia. It is hoped that this newly discovered information will allow physicians to better understand the pathogenesis of AIDS Related Dementia and will assist in the diagnosis and treatment of this devastating disease. Dr. Paul Shapshak commented, "Applying the Fractal non-linear information methodology is the most exciting technology in modern science and takes us into the 22nd Century. I am thankful and excited to work with Dr. Barnhill and his team at Health Discovery Corporation in this endeavor. They will have a leadership role in gene expression, bioinformatics and other new methods to defeat disease." Health Discovery Corporation is a systems biology oriented biomarker and pathway discovery company, which uses proprietary advanced mathematical platforms, such as Fractal Genomics Modeling (FGM) techniques, to help identify and characterize diagnostic targets and therapeutic candidates. Focusing on disease vs. normal, within complex genomic, proteomic and clinical data sets, Health Discovery Corporation was established to provide pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies with a broad range of analytical and decision support solutions to accelerate effective diagnostic and drug discovery. Founded in September 2003, the Company has offices in Texas, Georgia, and California. Health Discovery Corporation Announces Agreement with the University of Miami for Biomarker and Pathway Discovery in AIDS Related Dementia |
March 23, 2004
Hasta la vista, attacksBy William Jackson A traffic analysis tool conceived by the National Security Agency and born at the Naval Postgraduate School has come of age in a commercial application. Lancope Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., has incorporated the government’s Therminator tool into its flagship StealthWatch intrusion detection product. Therminator applies thermodynamics principles to network traffic flow to identify anomalous behavior that might indicate an attack. We’ve been doing intrusion detection basically the same way for the last 20 years, looking for known signatures or anomalous traffic patterns. Modern attacks, however, can change their spots and blend into acceptable traffic patterns, which makes them difficult to identify. We just can’t use the same approaches today, McEachen said. Former NSA mathematician Dave Ford conceived the new approach and has since been assigned to the Naval Postgraduate School. I saw Dave’s idea and thought it was ingenious, McEachen said. I wanted to get some of my students involved. In thermodynamics, the relationship of entropy or unavailable energy to temperature defines the state of a closed system. When that system is a network, entropy can be seen as an equilibrium of traffic between classes of senders and receivers. The volume of traffic replaces temperature. Using those principles, Therminator analyzes changes in the network’s state. In a way, we’re doing thermodynamics backward, McEachen said, by absorbing large amounts of detail into a macro-level view. We’re doing intelligent data reduction. Hasta la vista, attacks |
March 23, 2004
Palmer celebrates PiEvery year March 14 is Pi Day at Palmer High -- a mathematical celebration of the ratio of the distance around a circle divided by the diameter of the circle. This year was the seventh-annual schoolwide Pi Day, and students agreed that it was one of the best. Keith Kenley, Nick Kenshalo, Olin Bingham and Mark Psenak rocked the entire gym with their ode to their graphing calculator titled, "My T.I." Joel Carrick led the audience in the Pi anthem, "Oh number Pi, oh number Pi, your digits are unending..." An enthusiastic Mark led his Pre-Calculus classmates with a reciprocal trig function cheer "CHO! SHA! CAO!" and also showcased how to combine mathematics and aerobics with the Quadratic Formula Song. The competition in the mathematical art contest and the mathematical poetry contest was fierce. Vanessa Arno's "'" and Ruth Hulbert's "Fractal Spiral" tied for first place in the art contest. Last year's poetry contest winner Mary Brown, shared first place this year with Katie Applin. Brown's poem was an ode to calculus-related rate problems while Applin's uplifting poem examined the contributions of mathematics to our lives. Palmer celebrates Pi |
March 23, 2004
The sting: did gang really use a laser, phone and a computer to take the Ritz for £1.3m?Steven Morris The casino at the Ritz, to be found beneath the pavements of Piccadilly, London, in the hotel's former ballroom, prides itself on its gilded Edwardian splendour. Detectives are investigating claims that a gang used a laser scanner hidden in a mobile phone and linked to a computer to help beat the roulette wheel. It is understood that the three suspects, two Serbian men aged 38 and 33, and a 32-year-old Hungarian woman, made two visits to the casino earlier this month. On the first night they walked out with £100,000. They returned on a subsequent evening and appeared to disprove Albert Einstein's conclusion - that the only way to win on roulette was to pocket the money when the dealer was not looking - by walking out with £1.2m. It is thought the gang's success may have been based on a theory known as "sector targeting". The theory is relatively simple. A player determines the point at which the ball is released and the point it passes after one or two spins. He or she can use these figures to calculate the ball's "decaying orbit" and so anticipate the area of the wheel - or sector - the ball is likely to come to rest in. It is thought that the gang which allegedly struck at the Ritz may have taken the theory a step further by using the laser scanner to calculate the speed of the ball with more precision. Mark Griffiths, Europe's only professor of gambling, said: "On roulette mathematical systems have been used for years. When you've got technology involved it improves the chances." The sting: did gang really use a laser, phone and a computer to take the Ritz for £1.3m? |
March 22, 2004
Tales from the cryptologistBy MARTIN J. KIDSTON If you think the morning Jumble is hard to resolve, then you should see the assignments Dr. Brian Winkel gives his students at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Winkel, a professor of mathematics, stood before an audience at Carroll College recently, demonstrating how to crack various ciphers using mathematics and plenty of patience. In his Carroll talk, Winkel used a simple cipher to measure the "index of coincidence" in a cipher once sent to Edgar Allen Poe when he worked as a columnist at "Alexander's Weekly Messenger" in Philadelphia. Jules Verne's 1881 novel, "800 Leagues Down on the Amazon," carries a complicated cipher in its very plot. A man's life, Winkel mused, depends upon cracking the code. Winkel points out that Verne's cipher contains 276 characters. Each alphabet — the cipher contains six in all — contains 46 characters. At first glance, there appears to be no hope in cracking Verne's message. But Winkel, an expert at deciphering such things, goes to work. He points out the distance between repeating characters, and then figures the "alphabet's" correct decimation. From there, Winkel calculates the index of coincidence, determines any shifts within the alphabet, and finally, applies a mathematical formula to test the cipher piece by piece. Tales from the cryptologist |
March 21, 2004
Talent leak drains AT&T think tankBY KEVIN COUGHLIN When AT&T Labs was carved from Bell Labs in the 1995 breakup of AT&T , the telecom giant set lofty goals for its new research arm. "Our mission, in my view, is to invent the future of communications," proclaimed Alexander "Sandy" Fraser, who pushed to create AT&T Labs. Today, many of AT&T's top scientists still chase that dream -- somewhere else. They strive to invent the future in the shiniest ivory towers and hottest tech companies, from MIT to Microsoft, from the Pentagon to Google. Yet many remember the brief heyday of AT&T Labs, during the euphoria of the Internet boom, as the most thrilling time of their careers. For them, the exodus is a tragedy. "We had a national gem," said Avi Rubin, who exposed flaws in electronic voting systems last year as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University. Gone from AT&T Labs, or nearly so, are groups highly regarded for their long-term studies in artificial intelligence and machine learning, network security and cryptography, algorithms and theoretical computer science, and statistics. AT&T research operations in Cambridge, England, and at the University of California, Berkeley are gone, too. Talent leak drains AT&T think tank |
March 20, 2004
Maqbool opens 3-day maths conference at GCULAHORE: Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool on Thursday opened a three-day “World Conference on 21st century Mathematics” organised by Government College University (GCU) School of Mathematical Sciences (SMS) and said mathematics was the key to the knowledge of all sciences. Mr Maqbool said he wanted SMS to grow into a world-class institution and give opportunities to the students to learn from eminent mathematicians as well as produce maths scholars. He said mathematical training help discipline the mind, develop logical and critical reasoning, and create analytical and problem solving will of a high magnitude. “Mathematics provides the foundation of the knowledge economy, which is essential in the physical sciences, technology, business, financial services and computer technology and major employers in the engineering, construction, pharmaceutical, financial and retail sectors have all made clear to us their continuing need for people with appropriate mathematical skills,” said the governor. Maqbool opens 3-day maths conference at GCU |
March 19, 2004
Why TB treatments sometimes fail, a maths problemHealth, Research Thanks to vaccines and improved socio-economic conditions in the developed world, transmission of tuberculosis (TB) is almost a thing of the past. But poorer countries are not so lucky: they face variable success with treatment and a high risk of re-infection. Can a new mathematical formula help? In an example of fruitful bi-lateral European research co-operation, scientists at the Portuguese Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC), together with colleagues at the Universities of Lisbon (PT) and Warwick (UK), have developed a mathematical model which explains why the tuberculosis vaccine is often ineffective in developing countries. The model predicts the decrease in TB cases in light of both the socio-economic development of a population and the characteristics of new vaccines. These findings – published recently in the Proceedings of the Royal Society – will help solve a 30-year mystery as to what role socio-economics, genetics and environmental factors play in variable treatment success for TB. Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) – the only vaccine currently used against TB – has variable success, and there is no consensus about its usefulness. For example, its ability to protect ranges from 80% in the UK to almost none in India, the team of scientists estimate. Their new model analyses the impact of factors – such as population density, access to primary healthcare, sanitation and diet – on how rapidly TB is transmitted. Why TB treatments sometimes fail, a maths problem |
March 19, 2004
Mathematical rule said to be widely and wrongly used to forecast future beach erosionA decades-old mathematical model is being inappropriately used in at least 26 nations to make potentially costly predictions about how shorelines will retreat in response to rising sea levels, two coastal scientists contended in the Friday, March 19, 2004, issue of the research journal Science. "Models can be a hazard to society, and this is certainly an example of such," wrote Orrin Pilkey of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and J. Andrew Cooper of the Coastal Research Group at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, in a Perspectives commentary. The mathematical equation, called the Bruun rule, "is a ’one model fits all’ approach unsuitable in a highly complex natural environment with large spatial variations in shoreline retreat," the two authors added. "Even under ideal conditions ... the rule has never been credibly shown to provide accurate predictions." "We advocate recognition and acceptance that we cannot actually predict shoreline retreat related to sea level rise," Pilkey said, quoting from their commentary. "It’s too complex. "What startles me is why people think they can take a mathematical equation that requires only a navigation chart and actually predict what sea level rise will do. The answer is because everybody thinks that if it’s done mathematically it’s sophisticated and state-of-the-art. "One of the big lessons here is that sometimes intuition based on experience on a given shoreline is a lot better than a mathematical model." Mathematical rule said to be widely and wrongly used to forecast future beach erosion |
March 19, 2004
Winning teacher to add to skillsCentral York teacher Heather Godine, who earned a presidential award, sometimes teaches with spaghetti.By LAUREN FITZPATRICK WASHINGTON, D.C. — Central York High School math teacher Heather Godine insists she doesn’t teach math. She teaches students. “I tell them I like to infect them with math,” she said. Godine’s passion for making students love math has earned her the prestigious Presidential Award for Mathematics and Science Teaching. This week she’s attending a week-long celebration in the nation’s capital along with the 94 other winning math and science teachers from all 50 states and four U.S. territories. “When I started teaching I thought I was going to be teaching math,” Godine said. “The longer I do it, the more I realize teaching math is secondary to catching students.” Tonight the 11-year veteran will receive her award at a dinner ceremony and a $10,000 grant from the National Science Foundation that she plans to use for professional development. Winning teacher to add to skills |
March 18, 2004
JOHN POPLE
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March 18, 2004
GEORGE ELLIS
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March 17, 2004
Holt and Encyclopaedia Britannica Sign Distribution Agreement for Mathematics in ContextHolt, Rinehart and Winston announced today a long-term agreement with Encyclopaedia Britannica that gives Holt exclusive distribution rights to Mathematics in Context (MiC), an innovative middle school mathematics curriculum published by Britannica and funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF). "Mathematics in Context has proven to be an outstanding curriculum that really engages students with its real-world context for problem solving and learning of mathematical concepts," said Judy Fowler, president of Holt. "We are pleased to have this long-term agreement with Encyclopaedia Britannica, and we also look forward to a successful partnership with all the researchers and educators who developed MiC." Holt and Encyclopaedia Britannica Sign Distribution Agreement for Mathematics in Context |
March 17, 2004
Student's math skills add upBY JASON WERMERS A Maggie L. Walker Governor's School senior's love of math has earned her another big payday. This time, Linda Westrick, 18, of Hanover County, finished in fourth place in the nationwide Intel Science Talent Search, which earned her a $25,000 college scholarship. In December, Westrick won $40,000 when she took third place in another national contest, the Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology. She was recognized for her work on a mathematical function known as the "number derivative." The function, performed several times on a composite number and graphed, produces a pattern. Walker is a Richmond-based public regional school for gifted students. Westrick was among 40 finalists selected from 300 semifinalists and 1,500 competitors. Westrick's mother, Anne, said her daughter has been accepted to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is waiting to hear from Princeton University and the University of Virginia. Student's math skills add up |
March 17, 2004
Virtual Screening Lab Zeroes in on New DrugsResearchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have come up with computational tools that serve as a virtual screening lab to help chemists weed through millions of possible drug candidates even before they dirty their first test tube. Chemist Curt Breneman, mathematician Kristin Bennett, and computer scientist Mark Embrechts developed faster and more accurate techniques for describing molecules and combined them with next-generation neural networks and learning methods as part of the Drug Discovery and Semi-Supervised Learning (DDASSL) project. Funded by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence award, the DDASSL (pronounced "dazzle") project has spawned a number of descendants. Today, 10 research projects on the RPI campus, ranging from the life sciences to materials science to cybersecurity, can trace their origins in part to DDASSL (http://www.drugmining.com/). Virtual Screening Lab Zeroes in on New Drugs |
March 16, 2004
A Biological Dig for the Roots of LanguageBy NICHOLAS WADE Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it. If that family tree of human language could be reconstructed and its branching points dated, a wonderful new window would be opened onto the human past. Languages change so fast, the linguists point out, that their genealogies can be traced back only a few thousand years at best before the signal dissolves completely into noise: witness how hard Chaucer is to read just 600 years later. But the linguists' problem has recently attracted a new group of researchers who are more hopeful of success. They are biologists who have developed sophisticated mathematical tools for drawing up family trees of genes and species. Because the same problems crop up in both gene trees and language trees, the biologists are confident that their tools will work with languages, too. Dr. Gray's results, published in November in Nature with his colleague Quentin Atkinson, have major implications, if correct, for archaeology as well as for linguistics. The shape of his tree is unsurprising — it arranges the Indo-European languages in much the same way as linguists do, using conventional methods of comparison. But the dates he puts on the tree are radically older. Dr. Gray's calculations show that the ancestral tongue known as proto-Indo-European existed some 8,700 years ago (give or take 1,200 years), making it considerably older than linguists have assumed is likely. The age of proto-Indo-European bears on a longstanding archaeological dispute. Some researchers, following the lead of Dr. Marija Gimbutas, who died in 1994, believe that the Indo-European languages were spread by warriors moving from their homeland in the Russian steppes, north of the Black and Caspian Seas, some time after 6,000 years ago. A rival theory, proposed by Dr. Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge, holds that the Indo-Europeans were the first farmers who lived in ancient Turkey and that their language expanded not by conquest but with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Dr. Gray's date, if accepted, would support the Renfrew position. A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language |
March 16, 2004
PRIDE OF BRITAIN: SO BRAVE .. SO YOUNGBy Jenny Johnston TEARS and applause greeted the brave youngsters named as Children of Courage at the awards yesterday. Stirring stories of triumph over adversity and selfless thought for others warmed the heart. Cornel Hrisca-Munn, who was born with no lower arms and a severely deformed leg, swam 1,000 metres in 45 minutes to raise more than £4,000 for Iraq war victim Ali Abbas. He lost both his arms in an explosion which killed his family. And 13-year-old Ali passed Cornel the award with the prosthetic arms he had fitted in Britain in October. Cornel was born in Romania and put in an orphanage. Aid workers Doreen and Ken Munn saw the 16-month old in 1994, brought him back to Worcestershire and adopted him. Cornel's deformed leg was amputated when he was three and he was fitted with a prosthetic one. He was also given a prosthetic arm but found it heavy and uncomfortable and said he wanted to manage without. Doreen said: "He's an amazing, positive boy. To watch him on the stage was just wonderful." Cornel is one of the highest achievers at his mainstream school. He can write, draw, play the drums and snooker, is a brilliant mathematician and a whiz on PlayStation. He wants to be a pilot. He said: "I don't see why I shouldn't. Douglas Bader flew without limbs," PRIDE OF BRITAIN: SO BRAVE .. SO YOUNG |
March 15, 2004
Are You Slow In Coordinating Your Thoughts?Many complex systems are composed of a large number of similar units that are connected in a complicated manner. An important example is provided by neural networks where nerve cells in the brain communicate by exchanging pulses via synaptic connections. Unlike atoms in a crystal which are arranged on a regular, e.g cubic lattice, nerve cells in the brain grow synaptic connections in a highly specific but irregular fashion. In such systems, a particular question is how rapid coordination, e.g. synchronization, between units of a complex network can be achieved. Three theoretical neuro-physicists from the Max Planck Institut for Flow Research in Goettingen have now shed new light on this question for networks of pulse-coupled oscillators, simple models of neural networks in the brain (Physical Review Letters 92: 074101, 2004). If this analysis captures key mechanisms of coordinating activity in neural networks of the brain, this would mean that the speed of neural information processing, i.e. thinking and reacting, can be severely limited by network connectivity. For instance, the analysis revealed that in random networks, the speed of synchronization only slowly increases with the average number of connections per neuron. This would imply that brain areas, within which rapid information exchange is essential, have to be highly connected. Are You Slow In Coordinating Your Thoughts? |
March 15, 2004
How can a poll of only 1,004 Americans represent 260 million people with only a 3 percent margin of error?Andrew Gelman, a professor in the departments of statistics and political science at Columbia University, explains. A "3 percent margin of error" means that there is a 95 percent chance that the survey result will be within 3 percent of the population value. To put it another way, you would expect to see a less than 3 percent difference between the proportion of people who say "yes" to the survey question and the proportion of people in the population who would say "yes" if asked. How is it that a survey of only 1,000 people can reach this level of accuracy? You must first assume that the survey respondents have been sampled at random from the population, meaning that people are selected one at a time, with all persons in the U.S. being equally likely to be picked at each point. For most polls, this is approximated by calling phone numbers generated randomly by computer. Finally, the 3 percent margin of error is an understatement because opinions change. On January 3, 2004, the Gallup poll included 410 Democrats, 26 percent of whom supported Howard Dean for president. The margin of error was 5 percent, and so we can be pretty sure that on that date, between 21 percent and 31 percent of Democrats supported Dean. But a lot of them have changed their minds. A poll is a snapshot, not a forecast. How can a poll of only 1,004 Americans represent 260 million people with only a 3 percent margin of error? |
March 14, 2004
YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN SETS NEW RECORD IN PI RECITATIONGraeme Bowd It wasn't the most visual of entertainment, but Daniel Tammet's amazing feat brought spontaneous applause from his audience. The mathematician and computer expert had just managed to recite the value of Pi with more than 22,000 figures after the decimal point. He says his extraordinary powers of recall appeared after an epileptic seizure at the age of three. His memory is now so good that he doesn't need an address book. Telephone numbers stay in his head indefinitely and he can log a page of text seen for a few seconds. The world record set in Japan is over 40,000. Daniel believes he could beat it, but probably won't bother. YOUNG MATHEMATICIAN SETS NEW RECORD IN PI RECITATION |
March 13, 2004
Prize for bookie-beating studentA student who set out to beat the odds with a new way of predicting the outcome of football matches has won a national statistics prize. Sebastian Hall, from Bristol, took first prize in the Association of Statistics Lecturers in Universities competition, to go with his degree from the University of the West of England. His dissertation was about two complex mathematical models - one of which generated a small profit. "Since then I've had a go at it myself and it didn't perform too well," said the 23 year old. "I lost about £20." Prize for bookie-beating student |
March 13, 2004
Turning science into profitsBy SIMON COLLINS A world-leading model of the human lung, developed for its own sake, is yielding dividends for Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. The model's author, Dr Merryn Tawhai, and her colleagues at Auckland University's Bioengineering Research Institute created the mathematical simulation "because we just wanted to understand". But that exercise has also become a model of a different kind - an all-too-rare example of how New Zealand might create economic value out of the $800 million taxpayers shell out each year for research. She described every point on the surface of that sponge mathematically, then solved the equations to minimise the distance between each point and the surface. Finally, she used another mathematical formula to fill the volume inside the surface with airways like those observed in human patients. Turning science into profits |
March 13, 2004
Broken Silence: Mathematics in our livesBy MARCO J. DAGASUHAN My teacher in high school had shared to our class what a student once asked him, "Sir, who invented mathematics? If I know who discovered this thing, I will kill him." This person is just one of the many people whom I know who dislike mathematics so much. For them, this subject only brought miseries to their studies. It is undeniable that many students have failed in math and they considered it as the most difficult subject. As a result, mathematics became the most-hated subject which also made math teachers as the least favorite to a large number of students. Yes, it's true that mathematics is some kind of a challenge which is very hard to surpass. But wait a minute, hasn't this subject brought any good things to us? Haven't we realized what are the vital roles that mathematics can only perform? (The author is a 20 year old third year Mass Communication student of Liceo de Cagayan University, Cagayan de Oro City. He is fond of reading books, magazines, newspapers and novels especially fantasy and adventured-filled like Harry Potter books.) Broken Silence: Mathematics in our lives |
March 12, 2004
Why honey dribbles not dropsHeather Catchpole An infinitely long dribble has helped mathematicians understand why honey forms long threads that don't break up into drops. Sergey Senchenko and Professor Tomas Bohr from the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby found these dribbles were more stable than we thought. Not even a wobble made them break. Dr Yvonne Stokes is an Australian mathematician from the University of Adelaide who specialises in honey flow. And she said that the fact that water breaks up into drops pretty quickly but honey doesn't was an old scientific "conundrum". A drip of honey will break if you shake it enough but you might have to shake it quite violently, she said. "You get these incredibly long filaments, and sometimes you even have to shake the spoon to even get it to break. You don't get these long threads with less viscous fluids like water as they break up into droplets. "A lot of the models people have come up with have predicted they will break at a certain point in time based on viscosity and surface tension. However, the very viscous fluids don't break when the models show they should," she said. Scientists don't understand what is going on and why these drips don't break, she said. "This paper is trying to address that." Why honey dribbles not drops |
March 11, 2004
THE MATHEMATICS OF THE UNIVERSE |
March 10, 2004
To many of the math-minded, next Sunday is a holy dayTo many of the math-minded, next Sunday is a holy day. Expect them to be eating ritualistic foods, such as pepperoni pizza and lemon meringue pie. And singing special songs, such as ``I'm a Little Number'' (to the tune of ``I'm a Little Teapot''). All in honor of National Pi Day. Math teachers and numerical maniacs traditionally pay homage to pi during the third month of the year, on the 14th day, at approximately 1:59 p.m. ``It's like religion,'' said Suz Antink, Palo Alto High School's math teacher and instructional supervisor. ``It's got a lot of mysteries to it, but it's right there in our midst.'' To many of the math-minded, next Sunday is a holy day |
March 8, 2004
Mining the Tagged WebIvars Peterson's MathTrek Searching the World Wide Web for authoritative sources of information about a given topic can be a daunting task. Consulting Google to track down "jaguar," for example, generates an alarming list of more than 7 million documents—a mad muddle of entries about cars, animals, sports teams, computers, and a town in Poland. One reason for Google's current success as a search engine, however, is its uncanny ability to place relevant documents high in its listings. An important component of Google's winning recipe for judging relevance is an algorithm that tabulates "votes" on a Web page's importance. Each link to a page counts as a vote of support for that page. Pages to which many other pages point rank higher than those to which few or no pages point. In effect, Google takes advantage of the Web's intricate structure, and this structure itself has been the target of considerable research. "In a sense, the Web is much like a complicated organism, in which the local structure on a microscopic scale looks very regular (like a biological cell), but the global structure exhibits interesting morphological structures (body and limbs) that are not obviously evident in the local structure," Ravi Kumar of IBM and his coworkers concluded in a paper presented in 2000 at the Ninth World Wide Web Conference. Indeed, IBM is working with a company called Factiva, which has licensed the WebFountain platform so that it can track corporate reputations and provide reports to clients spotlighting brand perceptions and industry trends. "From the language typically used to describe a product, you can get a sense of how it's doing," Proctor said. Both Google and WebFountain stemmed from academic research about text mining and the insight that the best way to find information is to focus on the biggest and most popular sites and Web pages. WebFountain goes one step further in trying to make sense of the pages themselves by tagging the information in a clear, consistent way. Any data miner that comes along now has a vast playing field on which to test its skill and prove its value. Mining the Tagged Web |
8 Marzo, 2004
CON LA MATEMATICA IN TESTAdi Antonio Miscio Girando le pagine dei grossi registri scolastici di Sampierdarena e spostandosi dagli anni Quaranta, fino agli Ottanta, leggiamo che da 36 a 40 erano le ore settimanali di insegnamento di Francesco Fogliotti. Quando già la normale cattedra di matematica e fisica di 18 ore è pesantissima, lui ne faceva il doppio! Deplorabile stacanovista, se l’avesse fatto per guadagnare il doppio. Da sparargli da parte dei compagni di lavoro, se avesse preteso che gli altri facessero altrettanto. Ma in lui era totalmente assente la tentazione di dare lezione di laboriosità. Il professor Fogliotti era contento di lavorare, di insegnare, di avere davanti scolaresche che crescessero nella conoscenza di quelle due ostiche materie, la fisica e la matematica, di cui era specialista appassionato e maestro insigne. E tutto sempre in assoluta gratuità, per amore di Don Bosco, dei giovani e… della scienza esatta! Per lui insegnare era più festa che fatica, festa goduta che annullava la fatica. Quando si ama non si fa fatica. E se si fatica, la stessa fatica viene amata. Sant’Agostino diceva questo dell’uomo e del suo agire nei vari ambiti della vita. Per Fogliotti ciò era valido al 100%. Siamo abituati a parlare dei salesiani laici come di quelli che istruiscono sui mestieri, che sono capi laboratorio, insegnanti di applicazioni tecniche, di educazione fisica... Qui parliamo di uno che ha insegnato per tutta una vita la disciplina più acuta, la matematica (e anche la fisica) con la naturalezza e la passione con cui gli antichi filosofi greci trattavano queste ardite questioni. E fu naturale per i ragazzi, per un’istintiva intuizione, dargli il nome di colui che delle scienze matematiche mise le fondamenta, Pitagora. Fuori della scuola Pitagora ridiventava Francesco, un uomo amabile, sorridente, sereno, umile… Né sono aggettivi sprecati, per lui. Tutt’altro. Nulla traspariva delle gratificazioni che gli venivano dall’esterno, della stima che verso di lui manifestavano ex alunni saliti in alto nella scala sociale, onorevoli, ministri, docenti di liceo e di università che ne sollecitavano la collaborazione alla Rivista Scientifica di Matematica e ne apprezzavano le soluzioni esatte e sorprendenti. A Sampierdarena molti godettero dell’assidua presenza al pianoforte, all’harmonium, all’organo del prof di matematica. Numeri e note musicali, armonia di calcoli e di suoni erano le armi del suo mestiere raffinato e nobilitante. Dopo 61 anni viene dolcezza e riconoscenza ad aprire le pagine del quaderno con gli appunti di trigonometria, che Fogliotti dettò a un gruppetto di chierici, che avevano in animo per l’anno dopo di affrontare l’esame di maturità classica. Una decina di lezioni nell’estate del 1942 dopo un anno di fatiche, di scuola, di studi, di pericoli. A Sampierdarena con più di sessanta salesiani e oltre cinquecento ragazzi interni. CON LA MATEMATICA IN TESTA |
March 5, 2004
Questioning The Prime DirectiveShould we be listening for a beacon from the clouds in the language of mathematics? It has long been offered as a prototypical communication sent from one advanced civilization to another, that the first message will encode the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or pi (3.142...). In Carl Sagan's book, Contact, and the movie it inspired, the signal beacon was the mathematical sequence of prime numbers, those which are divisible only by itself and one. Similarly, in Steven Spielberg's film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a dialogue is struck in the language of music in a quick action lesson in mimicry and translation. Can the inanimate or unintelligent spawn a sequence of primes, those numbers divisible only by one and itself, like 2,3,5,7, 11 and 13? The excerpt that follows from Wolfram's A New Kind of Science details the arguments for why Wolfram believes pure computation and natural phenomena can emulate most previous mathematical signatures of an intelligent broadcast. In other words, simple rules can fool the sky-listening algorithms currently wired for detection of another civilization's beacon. Questioning The Prime Directive |
March 4, 2004
Engineer wants "intelligent design" taught in schoolsBy Eli Kintisch Engineer Joe White ought to know an intelligent design when he sees one. By day, on the job at Boeing, White has worked on some of the world's best-built airplanes: the F-15, the F-18, and these days, the C-17 cargo jet. By night, White looks for designs on a vastly different scale. From his St. Charles home and at meetings of the Missouri Association for Creation, White has been preparing for years to convince the state that biological life itself shows evidence of an intelligent design. Now he wants to pass a law requiring Missouri teachers to teach the idea to public school students. In White's mind, molecular wonders such as DNA could not have occurred through the natural processes of evolution. "Here we have a complexity that is screaming intelligence," said White, 57, a slight man with neatly parted hair. Biological life and its complicated details, he said, "could not have come about by accident." Mainstream science vehemently opposes White and his allies. In 2002, the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science said that intelligent design had been shown to include "conceptual flaws in its formulation, a lack of credible scientific evidence, and misrepresentations of scientific facts." About 300 Missouri scientists signed a letter last month declaring that intelligent design "isn't science," adding that evolution was consistently shown through "observations of the contemporary and ancient natural world." According to the book, "Creationism's Trojan Horse," published this year by Oxford University press, many figures in the intelligent design movement have strong religious ties. Mathematician William A. Dembski, a leading philosopher in the movement, has invoked Christ and the New Testament in speeches. The Discovery Institute calls itself a "secular think tank." But an institute fund-raising document discovered in 1999 said it wanted to foster "science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." Engineer wants "intelligent design" taught in schools |
March 3, 2004
Math Expert, 'Game of Life' inventor, to lecture at WFUBy Pam Barrett The Wake Forest University Department of Mathematics will present the annual Ivey and Nell Gentry Lectureship with world-renowned math expert and game inventor John Conway on March 16. The Gentry lecture includes two free public lectures. The first, which is intended for people with a strong mathematics background, is titled "Some Things You Can't Hear the Shape Of." It will be held at 11 a.m. in Calloway Hall West, Room 16. The second lecture, "From Elementary Particles to Free Will," which is geared toward a general audience, will be held at 6 p.m. in Winston Hall, Room 126. In this lecture, which will focus on the paradox of particles and free will, Conway suggests that free will is somehow derived from the simpler kind of free will that particles have. While researching number theory under the supervision of eminent number theorist Harold Davenport, Conway made his first mark in mathematics when he solved the problem that every integer can be written as the sum of 37 numbers, each raised to the fifth power. But Conway's mathematical career was transformed after he became interested in symmetry groups and discovered a rare simple group of order that was so important he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. As a Fellow, Conway signed his name in a book with all other past Society members, including Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. However, it was with the invention and instant success of the Game of Life, a computer solitaire game of simulated births, deaths and survival, that Conway became a household name. According to an article on Conway written by J.J. O'Connor and E.F. Robertson, since 1970 more computer time worldwide has been devoted to the Game of Life than any other single activity. Math Expert, 'Game of Life' inventor, to lecture at WFU |
March 3, 2004
Success not theoretical for Thakurby Warren Parish Math wiz Gaurav Thakur has never been as interested in grades as the numbers that appear to be leading him beyond such letters. The Rockville teenager, who three years ago withdrew from public high school to independently study theoretical mathematics, has been named a finalist in a prestigious nationwide science competition. One of 40 students competing for a $100,000 grand prize, Thakur will present his project, entitled "Analysis of Generalized Factorial Functions," at the Intel Science Talent Search competition in Washington, D.C., this month. Teaching himself theoretical math from home since 10th grade, Thakur has completed several university-level math courses under Stanford University's Education Program for Gifted Youth. Regularly working into the early-morning hours, he has studied classical complex analysis, using Internet resources and professional journals. His Intel Science Talent Search project grew out of this independent study. Better explained with the mathematical language Thakur is most comfortable with, his project develops and proves formulas designed to calculate the rate of growth of generalized factorial functions. As an example, the factorial function of five is 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5. Adding exponents onto each of the above numbers would create a generalized factorial of five. "If you do this for a large figure, you need to know how many decimal digits you're going to have in the answer," Washington explained. "And [Thakur] has a way of calculating this." Success not theoretical for Thakur |
March 3, 2004
Atiku Tasks Banks on Mathematical CentreFrom Josephine Lohor in Abuja Vice President Atiku Abu-bakar yesterday called on banks in Nigeria to associate themselves with the National Mathematical Centre since they mostly employ mathematicians. Speaking when members of the National Endowment Committee of the centre led by Professor Sam Ale visited him at the State House, the Vice President said "mathematics is the foundation for any technological advancement in the world and as such, we as a people should rededicate ourselves to the learning of mathematics." While pledging the support of the Federal Government in making the centre one of excellence, he commended the delegation for designing mathematical games aimed at making the teaching of mathematics easier in schools. He said there was need for teachers to be trained and retrained to make them relevant to the changes in modern mathematics. He added that, "teachers have to make mathematics pleasurable. It is often made difficult by the way it is taught. The mode of teaching mathematics is fundamental. It should be made interesting and exciting." Atiku Tasks Banks on Mathematical Centre |
March 2, 2004
On teaching the teachersMihir Rakshit Teachers tend to fall in love with their own voice and I cannot claim to be an exception. Even so, a few months back I declined an invitation to deliver a lecture in a UGC Refresher Course (RC) for university and college teachers. In recent years teachers’ research output has been on the rise, thanks to UGC norms for promotion and data-crunching software facilities. How ever, the papers hardly go beyond their doctoral ancestors, tend to be mechanical and reflect poorly on authors’ comprehension of software-derived results. With a little help many of these earnest academics can become highly productive. For their success RCs require meticulous planning, drafting of dedicated faculty and close coordination among them. It is cost-effective to give priority to training younger teachers since they are more receptive and have a longer working life ahead of them. The idea is to instil the habit of (a) starting from first principles; and (b) not hiding one’s ignorance or limitations. While (intellectual) honesty is undoubtedly the best policy (at least for learning), in the absence of (a) economics becomes a black box and its practitioners fail to appreciate its relevance under specific circumstances. Recall Robertson’s advice for not memorising Hicks’s formula for derived demand unless one was a trained mathematician. On teaching the teachers |
March 1, 2004
What's Really Your Problem?Stuart Ayling Many people that speak to me seem to have a problem. A business problem that is - not a personal one. And they're speaking to me because they want to do something about it. They want things to be better - more sales, new customers, new markets. "What should I do?" they ask me. To solve marketing 'challenges' I like the four-stage approach to problem solving advocated by 19th century French mathematician, Jules-Henri Poincaré (altered ever so slightly here for business use): 1. Preparation - immersing ourselves in the issues, collecting and organising a diversity of data and relevant information. 2. Gestation - developing ideas in the mind, brainstorming, analysing. 3. Revelation - new facts are disclosed, a breakthrough insight occurs. 4. Action - following through with plans, persisting to overcome difficulties. What's Really Your Problem? |
March 1, 2004
Heads or Tails?Ivars Peterson Flipping a coin in the air, catching it, then determining whether it has come up heads or tails is a common way to start off a game or settle a question. Because you expect that heads is as likely to come up as tails, it sounds like a fair way to make a choice. But coin tossing isn't really random at all. A mechanical gadget can flip a properly positioned coin so that the coin always lands showing the same face. Some magicians can make a coin come up heads on every toss—even when they don't use a two-headed coin. A new mathematical analysis now suggests that, in a typical toss, a coin is more likely to land on the same face as it started out on. In the physics of coin tossing, the most important parameters are the coin's upward velocity and its rate of spin. When the spin rate is low, the coin acts like a thrown pizza. It's unlikely to turn over, even if it travels a long distance. Heads or Tails? |
March 1, 2004
Number GamesEd Pegg Jr In 1892, W W Rouse Ball published the four 4's problem in his classic "Mathematical Recreations and Essays". I see many odd variations of the problem, usually sent to me by desperate students. One group of problems comes from Point 24, a card game. Two or more people gather around a table. Four cards are displayed at a time, with face cards being 10. Everyone tries to reach 24 by combining these four numbers with operators + - × ÷ and parentheses. The one who gets the solution fastest taps the table to announce it. If the solution is correct, he/she can collect the cards on the table. Whoever gathers the most cards wins. Can you get Point 24 with cards 3, 3, 8, and 8? For this year, Erich Friedman suggested representing 2004 with a minimal number of some digit. I received many answers. (1111-111+1+1)*(1+1) == 2004; Matt Jones, Juha Saukkola (1+1)^11-11*(1+1)^(1+1) == 2004; Philippe Fondanaiche (1+1)*(1+1+(11-1)^(1+1+1)) == 2004; Boris Alexee Number Games |
March 1, 2004
Statistician Wins $30,000 Teaching, Scholarship PrizeFrancisco J. Samaniego, professor of statistics at UC Davis, loves his subject and he loves a challenge. When part of your job includes teaching a required introductory class in statistics, that might be just as well. Now his passion for his subject has earned Samaniego UC Davis' top prize. The $30,000 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, funded by the UC Davis Foundation, is believed to be the largest of its kind in the United States. Professor Samaniego has devoted 32 years, more than half his life, to teaching excellence at UC Davis. He is held in high esteem in his research field, which reaches all parts of the university, and his students are inspired by his exemplary teaching methods. In teaching, research and service, he is a model for us all," said Winston Ko, dean of the division of mathematical and physical sciences. Samaniego said he loves the way statistics interfaces with virtually all other disciplines, from engineering to genetics and sociology to medicine. Statistics provides you with limitless opportunities to learn about and contribute to solving practical problems of all types, he said. On the mathematical side, the puzzles and surprises that you encounter in the theory and application of probability and statistics can't help but draw you in, he said. Statistician Wins $30,000 Teaching, Scholarship Prize |