Newsworthy Math
A Discussion about Mathematics in Society
2008
Simulation and Modeling
Simulation is a wonderful thing. It’s one of the foundations of mathematics. Scale models are a good example. If you want to see what the new building will look like make a model. It isn’t going to tell you everything, the architectural models of housing projects usually look wonderful, but it’s a great example of [...]
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Physical Data
RDF stores in hardware. Whatever else it turns out to be, the semantic web has already given us RDF. It’s here, it’s now, it rocks. RDF says that every data structure can be modeled using three part statements consisting of Subject, Predicate and Object. Each of these being a simple piece of data that can [...]
Posted in semantic web | 1 Comment »
Six Suggestions That Can Make You a Better Maker
A designer friend recently sent me a link to an excellent post by Eric Karjaluto on design. The original post is design specific – and well worth reading – but it also struck me as completely relevant to programming, which I do professionally, and to a great deal else that I’ve done and tried to [...]
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What’s the Biggest Number in the World?
They go on forever, of course, but one of the entertaining things about mathematics is its habit of defining and naming fabulously large numbers. This can also be useful. The Romans could barely write down the number of citizens in their empire. These days Roman numerals couldn’t write down the number of people on the [...]
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Who Needs Algebra?
One of the biggest questions about mathematical education has to be: Why bother? Anyone teaching math gets lots of practice answering that. It’s a good question. There are two types of justification, the aesthetic and the practical. The aesthetic case is actually the easy one. Math is one of the least obvious, most complex, profound [...]
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