2 — At The Double

Huffduffed by adactio on August 3rd, 2009

Episode two of A Further Five Numbers, the BBC radio series presented by Simon Singh.

We all remember the story of the Persian who invented chess and who asked to be paid with 1 grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third and so on, doubling all the way to the 64th square. He bankrupted the state!

This doubling is a form of exponential growth, which appears in everything from population growth to financial inflation to the inflation theory that supposedly caused the Big Bang.

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  1. 2 — At The Double

    —Huffduffed by boxman on September 11th, 2009

  2. 2 — At The Double

    —Huffduffed by michele on August 4th, 2009

  3. 2 — At The Double

    —Huffduffed by chrispederick on October 1st, 2009

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  1. 2 — At The Double

    Episode two of A Further Five Numbers, the BBC radio series presented by Simon Singh.

    We all remember the story of the Persian who invented chess and who asked to be paid with 1 grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the third and so on, doubling all the way to the 64th square. He bankrupted the state!

    This doubling is a form of exponential growth, which appears in everything from population growth to financial inflation to the inflation theory that supposedly caused the Big Bang.

    download

    Tagged with

    —Huffduffed by srushe 6 months ago

  2. The Number Four

    Episode one of Another Five Numbers, the BBC radio series presented by Simon Singh.

    Simon Singh’s journey begins with the number 4, which for over a century has fuelled one of the most elusive problems in mathematics: is it true that any map can be coloured with just 4 colours so that no two neighbouring countries have the same colour? This question has tested some of the most imaginative minds — including Lewis Carroll’s — and the eventual solution has aided the design of some of the world’s most complex air and road networks.

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    —Huffduffed by adactio one year ago