A Finite Simple Group Of Order 2
2nd September, 2007
Original by M. Salamone, performed by the Klein Four Group from their album Musical Fruitcake, available here.
The lyrics are below the fold.
Categories: Maths, Music | Comments (0) | Permalink
“Education Without Permission”
10th August, 2007
Last week should have been the summer school in Sirince, Turkey, on the subject of Algebra and Model Theory. This school is an annual event, and is financially supported by TUBITAK, the highest research institute of Turkey, the Turkish Mathematical Society, and various universities. You can see photographs of this idyllic event here. However this year it was closed down by the local authorities; one of the reasons given was “Education Without Permission”.
Worse, the event’s organiser, the distinguished mathematician and teacher Ali Nesin, has been arrested, and now faces criminal charges in Turkey. Alexandre Borovik is organising a campaign and a petition against this action here. I encourage everyone to sign it.
Categories: Politics | Comments (0) | Permalink
I danced with a man, who co-authored a paper with a girl, who appeared in a film with The Prince Of Wales
2nd August, 2007
My Erdös-Bacon number seems to be 6. At any rate my Erdös-number is (at most) 4, and my Bacon-number comes out at a dubious 2: When I was young I did some voice-over work in Empire Of The Sun, in which John Malkovich (Bacon-number 1) appeared.
UPDATE: Doormat points out that my Erdös-number is 3. Thus my E-B number is a questionable 5, which until recently would have made me a very doubtful joint world-record holder.
Categories: Nonsense | Comments (5) | Permalink
From e to eternity
23rd July, 2007
I have an article in the New Scientist magazine – in the shops now.
(Unless this post is more than a week old, in which case it be accessed here; or in the July 2007 archives of the New Scientist Website; (subscription requred).)
Categories: Logic, Maths | Comments (0) | Permalink
Paul Cohen 2: The Continuum Hypothesis
19th July, 2007
[This is a sequel to my post on the Axiom of Choice]
In the late 19th century, Georg Cantor’s work in set theory opened up an exciting world: that of infinite numbers.
Categories: Logic, Maths | Comments (0) | Permalink
Paul Cohen 1: The Axiom Of Choice
26th March, 2007
Paul Cohen has sadly died. The only logician ever to win the Fields Medal, he will primarily be remembered for his work in Set Theory, and in particular for proving two major independence results: that of the Axiom of Choice, and the Continuum Hypothesis. He also worked in mathematical analysis, for which he was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1964.
A short discussion of the Axiom of Choice is below the fold, with a sequel on the Continuum Hypothesis in the pipeline.
Categories: Logic, Maths | Comments (3) | Permalink
Beginning With A Bang
22nd March, 2007
Greetings, and welcome to my blog! I’m afraid there’s nothing much here at the moment, so you might want to come back in a few weeks once I’ve got round to writing something.
My main aim for this place is to write about any general scientific issues and developments which appeal to me, such as the surprising fact that the Canadian Firm D-Wave Systems has recently unveiled what it claims is the world’s first commercially viable quantum computer (while their competitors are decades behind, tinkering with tiny configurations in labs, wondering whether a functional machine is a practical possibility at all).
So almost always the views expressed here will be those of an interested non-expert, and I’m happy to be corrected by people better informed than me. Hopefully I’ll learn something from researching the posts, and get into the habit of writing about science at least semi-regularly.
I may also write occasional expository pieces on subjects I know a little more about, which will usually mean maths.
Quite often though I expect I’ll take the easy option, and stick the boot in to the enemy. For instance did you know that Universities of Westminster, Central Lancashire, and Salford each currently offer Bachelor of Science degrees in Homeopathy? Shame. They may as well offer BSc’s in The Physics of Christianity or `how the God depicted by the Jews and Christians is completely consistent with the Cosmological Singularity, an entity whose existence is required by physics’.
Categories: Bloggery | Comments (1) | Permalink
Next: Paul Cohen 1: The Axiom Of Choice >>