Analysis vs. Algebra …
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Tag Archives: math
A mathematician strikes back!
Math doesn’t ….. (NSFW language).
By way of Steven Strogatz
One of Robert A. Heinlein’s characters expressed a similar opinion, slightly more politely and much more concisely.
Hilbert’s Grand Hotel Paradox
I can think of a local science fiction convention that could use this hotel, except that Hilbert did not say how to deal with the congestion at the elevators. An exercise for the reader, I suppose.
Why do physicists subtract infinity from infinity?
From Jennifer Ouellette
Note: Quantum Electrodynamics works. The predictions it makes have been experimentally confirmed to many decimal places.
A mathematician in Soviet Russia
Imaginary numbers and reality
I first visited the complex plane 45 years ago, in High School. It was love at first sight, and I have been smitten ever since. Thank you, Margaret Matchett, my math teacher that year.
EDIT: I just looked her up on the Mathematics Genealogy Project. Go back three “generations” and you get to Ludwig Boltzmann, whose work has fascinated me since I first heard about it, not long after Mrs. Matchett’s math class.
Obscure joke
The Golden Ratio, and much more
Some surprising (to me, anyway) information about the history of the Golden Ratio. Also a cool animation of how to construct a pentagon by straight-edge and compass, and also (by cheating) a heptagon.
“When correctly viewed, everything is lewd”
Examples from Tom Lehrer’s own field:
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 