Mathematics

The Looming Population Implosion

A model based on global population data spanning the years from 1900 to 2010 has caused a research team to predict the opposite of what Doomsday Prophets of the 1960s and beyond insisted would happen-  the number of people on Earth will stabilize around t ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 4 2013 - 11:20am

Solution to The Jailer's Revenge

The solution to the Jailer’s Revenge question is fairly lengthy, so I think it warrants a separate blog entry. Please refer to the original question as it too is fairly long. Let’s firstly simplify the problem with smaller numbers, then scale it back up to ...

Blog Post - Richard Mankiewicz - Apr 8 2013 - 11:30am

The Math-e-Monday Puzzle: Infinite Packings Within Finite Figures

After the scramble to get out of jail, here are some questions about imprisoned shapes! In my last question, we came across parts of the so-called harmonic series 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5... 1/n. Now, this series is divergent; it does so very slowly, but as n ...

Blog Post - Richard Mankiewicz - Apr 9 2013 - 12:46am

The Math-e-Monday Puzzle: Squares from a Tetrahedral Die

It isn’t Monday, but I’m puzzled every day of the week. Alice is puzzled too; she’s playing with a new tetrahedral die. Each face has a different positive integer on it, but the numbers are peculiar. Alice quickly notices that if she rolls the die and adds ...

Blog Post - Richard Mankiewicz - May 8 2013 - 6:59am

Modeling A Queue

Two days ago I wrote a quick post to stimulate non-flat-EEG readers to consider an apparently trivial question, which in fact hid many subtleties. The general question I wanted to address was whether an estimate missing an uncertainty was more or less usef ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - May 10 2013 - 2:34pm

Hierarchical Social Networks: Can A Math Model Of "Seepage" Clobber Terrorism?

Terror networks are comparable in their structure to hierarchical organization in companies and certain online social networks, say the authors of a paper outlining how a mathematical model to disrupt flow of information in a complex real-world network, l ...

Article - News Staff - May 16 2013 - 5:30pm

Music And Mathematics Of Fractal-Like Sloth Canon Number Sequences

The Danish composer  Per Nørgård  uses an endless self similar (fractal like) strict sloth canon structure in some of his compositions such as his Symphony number 2. He first discovered his sequence in 1959. ...

Article - Robert Walker - Jan 19 2014 - 11:24am

The mathematics of sloth canon number sequences and Per Nørgård's infinity series

This describes the maths behind the sloth canon number sequences described in my Self Similar Sloth Canon Number Sequences article It simplifies the proofs here to use a 0 based notation. So we define an integer sequence f(n) as a map from the non negativ ...

Blog Post - Robert Walker - Jan 19 2014 - 11:24am

Indirect Coupling- Solving A 350-year-old Pendulum Mystery May Help With Epilepsy Too

A 350-year-old mathematical mystery, that two pendulum clocks mounted together could swing in opposite directions, due to tiny vibrations in the beam caused by both clocks affecting their motions, is a step closing to having a formula derived. And it coul ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 10 2013 - 4:49pm

Cities, Like Organisms, Are A Predictable Complex System Of Social Reactor And Network

Cities have long been likened to organisms, ant colonies, and river networks. Yet clever analogies fail to capture the essence of how cities really function.   A paper in Science attempts to derive a series of mathematical formulas that describe how citie ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 21 2013 - 9:35am