See Not from concentrate.
Via the Bad Astronomer, who commented:
Understanding such things is as easy as pi. ‘e just goes to the root of the problem, cos it’s no sin. And if you don’t get it, well, secant you shall find.
Yesterday, May 14, was my birthday, when I turned 30 (if you count in base 19). It was a good time–one of my best birthdays. I am very gratified by the good wishes I got from all of my family and friends.
I have read the first seven chapters of Julian Havil’s Gamma, mostly on the bus to and from work (a benefit of public transportation that does not get nearly enough attention, IMHO). It is slow going because I am working through all the mathematical derivations. These are very clearly presented so this is going well, but it still takes time. A couple modern proofs by Paul Erdös left my head spinning, but I have been able to follow (with appropriate awe), the classic results of Leonard Euler. I suppose this is appropriate given my historical interests :-)>
After a long pause I have been reading more in Julian Havil’s Gamma, which I mentioned a couple months ago.
On the bus going home tonight I worked through Euler’s original solution of the Basel problem. I was just stunned by how clever that was.
This original solution was somewhat lacking in mathematical rigor–more like the sort of thing a physicist would do :-)> So I appreciated it all the more. Euler later went back and produced a rigorous version.
From the Daily Mail: Family holidays ruined by earliest Easter in 90 years
God Plays Dice refers to this column, introducing a nice discussion of how the date of Easter is calculated. At the end of it she refers back to it, commenting
And I have no sympathy for the people quoted in that article. They’ve known this was coming since 1752, when the UK changed over to the Gregorian calendar.
Via Slashdot
John Baez has posted a list of recommended free math and physics books available on the web. This is very helpful: There are a lot of free texts out there, but taken as a whole they only demonstrate Sturgeon’s revelation. You need some educated guidance to find the good stuff in a finite time.
2%: The US Civil War, mathematics, and why we have already lost in Iraq
Solitudinem fecerunt, pacem appelunt – They made a desert and called it peace. (Tacitus)
As long as I can remember I been aware of this famous quotation from Isaac Newton
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
and thought of it as a distinctly modest remark by one of the three greatest mathematicians in history.
However, there is more to it. Newton chose that image at least in part because of his feud with Robert Hooke, who was physically rather short.
From “On the Shoulders of Giants” or, Revenge is a Dish Best Eaten Cold Edition at The Inverse Square Blog, which I learned about from Cosmic Variance.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 
