A Mathematician Goes on Vacation 2

So, I didn't have such good luck with weather. It rained the whole first week I was there, which meant I watched a lot of Serbian TV on my inlaws' couch. Thank goodness The French Open was on Eurosport or I would have lost my mind. I also caught the above video quite a lot. (Their national stations play music videos between programs.) It seems to be the summer dance jam. There actually is some math in it, and if you can see it betwixt all the half-naked dancers, you know you're a bona fide geek. Good luck!

the scarecrow gets his brain (almost)

I want a doctorate of "think-ology".

Game of Life

One of Lee's comments on the mandelbrot set led me to something called The Game of Life. I found lots of interesting sites on the game and tons of videos on Youtube. For the uninitiated, these two videos featuring John Conway, the game's creator, are a good intro to the rules of the game. They also help to explain why the game is so interesting.

Part 1


Part 2



This video is my favorite Life simulation. I was thinking someone has to have mapped the patterns of Life into the audio field. And sure enough, you get both the audio and visual representation of the patterns in this video to I think a much more engaging effect.

Speed Pi

Rob sent this. Duly impressed.

Math and Dance

I have a friend who is getting her doctorate in dance. I asked her if she knew of any intersection between math and dance. She dug up this link to Mathdance. There are a couple of professors that have written a series of instructional dance activities to teach math concepts. Pretty wild. I can't ever imagine leading my students in a ensemble dance of irrational numbers. Maybe I should. I went looking for inspiration on Youtube and found the Dance of Parallel Lines...



and some kind of wild trig dance...

YofX on Spring Break

Tunxis is going on spring break this week. I'll be enjoying the vacation, but will be back posting on 3/23. Until then, stay geeky, and solve some good problems.
Already, bored? Check out this Geeks Gone Wild Vid

Understanding Instant Runoff

I've been crawling the web, gearing up to teach voting systems in my Math for Liberal Arts course. I want to pass on this interesting site.

The voting that we do in the US is a modified plurality vote. One problem with our system is that often the winning canidate has not garnered a majority. One popular alternative used frequently in other countries is run-off voting, or what we call the Hare method in class. I found a video (below) and a great site, Choiceranker to explain how run-off voting works. Choiceranker even gives you the chance to participate in opinion polls that use the run-off method. Check them out.

Shirley Ellis's Name Game

Probably one of the coolest algorithms of all times. I love the fact that the name game is not a song, but a means to generate a whole series of songs given a cede. Formally, the name game is a lot more interesting (if not a little sillier) than a normal song. The Name Game is the brain child of Shirley Ellis. She recorded it in 1965. (Somehow I thought the song was much older.) The placard below is from some promotional material of the time, and actually explains the rules (or algorithm). Note the exceptions so we don't end up swearing.

Really Cool Visual Algorithm for Multiplication

One of my students in math for Liberal Arts dug this up on YouTube. I had never seen this technique for multiplication before. I love it--completely visual. Thanks, Rachael!

New Math

New Math was an educational movement in the 50's/early 60's (?) to increase the rigor of mathematics education in grade schools. Among other things it stressed doing arithmetic in different bases. This of course caused a great deal of consternation among parents as they brought home there homework and told there parents with great conviction that 3+2=11 (and of course they were right in base 4). Lehrer's song parodies parental exasperation.



It is widely assumed that we have a base 10 system because we have 10 fingers, our hands being the original calculators. I read in Number (Dantzig) that many have advocated giving up are base 10 system for base 12. The reason being there are twice as many base divisors (2,3,4,6) than 10 (2,5). Divisibility is extremely easy to test for base divisors. Think about how easy it is to tell whether a number is divisible by 2 or 5. In fact most of our temporal and customary measures are base twelve. There is also a competing logic. The great mathematician Lagrange argued for a prime base like 7. Can you guess why?

Flight of the Conchords

I'm a sucker for any math visualizations of personal lives. Sue told me about a show she watches: Flight of the Conchords. I'll spare you the weak premise, but there are two musicians and a manager. The manager in last night's episode decides that their relationship should go from being strictly professional to friends. The funny part of this is the completely business-like manner in which the manager tries to accomplish this transition. Why am I interested? He uses a graph to explain. His theory is that the closeness of relationship is proportional to the amount of time one spends together. (That would of course make your coworkers your best friends, but don't get hung up on the details.) Here is a Youtube clip of the description. (You'll have to fast forward to about 1:53.)



Later in the show, the musicians have failed miserably at being friends. Here is the manager's graphic summary of the duo's blunders. (Fast forward to the 6:00 min mark.)



Thanks, Sue!

My Hero, Zero

Here is some retro fun. Stations used to air a series called School House Rocks between cartoons when I was a kid. The cartoons were supposed to educate you on a variety subjects. This one obviously targets arithmetic, but they have language and civics, too. Strangely, I don't remember the number ones at all. I have to thank Sue for this vid.

Do you suffer from F.D. (fractile dysfunction)

This is even better than his Darth Vadar video.

This joke never gets old...

I found basically the same math joke in two different youtube clips. It would be interesting if there were more examples. The first is from Abbot and Costello. The second looks to be from a movie called Ma and Pa Kettle. I'm not sure which clip was first. I like Ma and Pa Kettle slightly better, only because I like to hear Ma Kettle say, "I'm surprised at yer learnin'". 075 students I want an explanation of the mistake.

Mathalicious

Think Fergie with specs. Thanks, Lori, for sending this over.

Math Survey Continued

Helen in Financial Aid responds to the question, 'What would you do if you saw a polynomial on the side of the road?' by saying "the safety issue is a variable…" The ellipsis at the end of that kind of scares me. It is kind of like the spooky music in a horror movie. I start thinking why, why is the safety issue variabe, what's she gonna do to the polynomial, don't go upstairs, that is where Helen the polnomial killer is, Ahhhh!

Sorry. Yes, where were we... and pay attention (my students), Helen also said, "And yes, I used math to plot out a perfect baseball diamond for a whiffle ball game for my cub scouts.. they were duly impressed…"

Not many know this, but Helen is also a movie star thanks to John Timmons and his students. Check out her video below.

The Polygon Song

As hypnotic as the thong song, but with shapes. If you have ever felt like 'just a boring square', watch this movie. Thanks Marguerite!