Yesterday I gave a talk “Social life of Infinity: from mathematics to Kitsch” at “Arts meet Science” event held at Jodrell Bank. I mentioned in the talk that kisch is virtually unknown in mathematics and was presented with a counterexample: one of the speakers, sci-fi writer David McIntee, gave me a Sudocube bought in the Visitor Centre [...]
Archive for September, 2008
A talk at Jodrell Bank
Posted in Uncategorized on September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
0-1 Law
Posted in Uncategorized on September 18, 2008 | 2 Comments »
A quote from Anatole Kaletsky in Times Online:
The wonder of financial crises is how events can move straight from impossible to inevitable, without ever passing through improbable.
In mathematics this type of statements is called “0-1 laws”.
Gut Instinct’s Surprising Role in Math?
Posted in Uncategorized on September 16, 2008 | 4 Comments »
NYT published a paper Basics: Gut Instinct’s Surprising Role in Math on relations between symbolic/approxiamte arithmetics in human mind. A quote caught my eye:
“When mathematicians and physicists are left alone in a room, one of the games they’ll play is called a Fermi problem, in which they try to figure out the approximate answer to an arbitrary [...]
The magic wand of education: criteria
Posted in Uncategorized on September 15, 2008 | 3 Comments »
BBC published a news report Magic ‘boosts pupils’ confidence’:
Children taught how to do magic tricks instead of attending standard personal and social education lessons perform better socially, a psychologist says.
Magic requires self-discipline and an ability to empathise with your audience, Prof Richard Wiseman told the British Association Science Festival.
His team thinks it could help with bullying [...]
New Directions in Philosophy of Mathematics
Posted in Uncategorized on September 2, 2008 | 2 Comments »
MIMS Workshop on
New Directions in Philosophy of Mathematics
Manchester, Saturday 4 October 2008.
This workshop is part of the MIMS (Manchester Institute for Mathematical Sciences) New Directions series of workshops taking place in MIMS throughout 2008.
Mathematics and philosophy have a long history of involvement with each other. Profound changes to both disciplines have occurred through this interaction [...]
