The guys sit down with Danica McKellar for a stellar conversation about growing up Winnie Cooper, her passion for math and how to give children confidence through education. Danica is WAY smart. She has a theorem named after her for crapsake! This ep takes wonderful turns that you may not expect!
http://www.nerdist.com/2012/03/nerdist-podcast-danica-mckellar/
Today, Charles Babbage writes a letter to Alfred Lord Tennyson. The University of Houston’s College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
Tagged with charles babbage alfred lord tennyson mathematics poetry
"the epic feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who invented an astonishingly powerful new mathematical tool: calculus."
Tagged with mathematics calculus newton leibniz
When writing the Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton declared his hand on most of the big questions in physics. He outlined the nature of space, explained the motions of the planets and conceived the operation of gravity. He also laid down the law on time declaring:
“Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external.”
For Newton time was absolute and set apart from the universe, but with the theories of Albert Einstein time became more complicated; it could be squeezed and distorted and was different in different places.
Time is integral to our experience of things but we find it very difficult to think about. It may not even exist and yet seems written into the existence of absolutely everything.
Contributors:
Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey
Monica Grady, Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at the Open University
Ian Stewart, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20081218.shtml
(sometimes, they pull these shows after a week…but there’s a real audio stream available on their site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/rams/inourtime_20081218.ram)
Join author and journalist Alex Bellos for a surprising and entertaining look at the world of mathematics.
By bringing together history, reportage and mathematical proofs, and covering subjects from adding to algebra, from set theory to statistics, and from logarithms to logical paradoxes, Alex Bellos reveals how mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives.
Join Alex Bellos at the RSA to discover the beauty of mathematical patterns in nature, the peculiar predictability of random behaviour, how to win at the casino, the deep connections between maths, religion and philosophy, and why the best Scrabble players are mathematicians.
Speaker:Alex Bellos, writer, broadcaster and author of Futebol, the Brazilian Way of Life (Bloomsbury, 2002) and Alex’s Adventures in Numberland (Bloomsbury, 2010).
Chair:Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA.
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/adventures-in-numberland
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.
Tagged with mathematics five numbers book:author=simon singh bbc four
Former child prodigy Terence Tao has become one of the world’s greatest living mathematicians. At 24 he became the youngest person ever appointed full professor at UCLA, and at the tender age of 31 he was awarded mathematics’ highest honour, the Fields Medal.
Back in his childhood home of Australia, he visited the ANU to deliver this fascinating talk about one of his favourite subjects, prime numbers.
Tagged with mathematics prime numbers terence tao