meep ([info]meep) wrote,
@ 2007-11-02 06:34:00
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Entry tags:math matters

Meep's Math Matters is go

Math people, you know this already, and please don't contradict my Gauss anecdote. It's part of math culture, so shhhhhhhh.



The target audience is general - not for math know-it-alls. But since so many of you do know-it-all, I'm certainly taking recommendations. I'm going to do stuff like the infinitude of primes, irrationality of square root of 2, the classics. I thought I'd start with something conceptually simple.


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[info]rgoing
2007-11-02 12:02 pm UTC (link)
Excellent.

Like Milton and his pencil.

I think you went through the end a little too fast, though, when you listed the triangular numbers.

I await "meep explains calculus to idiot ex-judges".

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[info]meep
2007-11-02 12:40 pm UTC (link)
Milton had a pencil? (I don't know about that)

The actual triangular numbers aren't that important (1, 3, 6, 10, etc.), just listing the first few for people to get a flavor of how it works.

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[info]meep
2007-11-02 01:31 pm UTC (link)
Dur. I dumb. I posted that video not too long ago.

For some reason, I was thinking of John Milton (him being a writer... and I thought "maybe they had pencils back then"....)

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[info]rgoing
2007-11-02 01:55 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, and I confess I wrote it that way because I suspect there aren't too many ways to make meep feel dumb.

But it was meant as a high compliment, because your presentation style is as good as Friedman with the pencil, which is one of the best I've ever seen.

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[info]tldz
2007-11-02 01:17 pm UTC (link)
Definitely fun.
On the trivia side, Augustine had this whole thing about the number 153 (from John 21:11) being the 17th triangular number. (17 being 10 + 7, i.e. the sum of the ten commandments and the heavenly perfection of Christ.) And 153 is the sum of the cubes of its digits, which is just plain weird.

And, have you considered submitting this to the carnival of mathematics?

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[info]meep
2007-11-02 01:22 pm UTC (link)
Where is the carnival? I haven't submitted links to blog carnivals in forever.

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[info]tldz
2007-11-02 01:43 pm UTC (link)
The meta-site for the carnival is at:

http://carnivalofmathematics.wordpress.com/

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[info]meep
2007-11-02 01:51 pm UTC (link)
Okay, I submitted.

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[info]meep
2007-11-02 01:23 pm UTC (link)
I might do something short on numerology, in the spirit of Martin Gardner's numerology articles (where he's having a bunch of fun making fun of it)... might include it in my "false proofs" category.

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Suggestions for future videos
(Anonymous)
2007-11-03 10:09 pm UTC (link)
Meep,

Fun video. I look your "attitude".

Mudd Math Fun Facts has a number of easy facts that would lend themselves to videos. Some that I think would work:

Multiplication by 11, also by 111
Area of a circle or regular polygon
Proofs without words
Birthday problem
Magic 1089

Sol
http://WildAboutMath.com

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: Suggestions for future videos
[info]meep
2007-11-03 10:32 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for the comment - I had just gone to your post today for the math carnival.

I've got one of the Proof Without Words books (should be getting the other one, soon), and I'm going to do the birthday-matching problem and the Monty Hall problem. I don't know Magic 1089, I think. Multiplication by 11 is a good one, but I think after I do the series bit I'll do some non-computational stuff.

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