Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau is bemused by his students’ reaction to unusual numbers: [I]t is fascinating how we condition people to be used to numbers in a certain range, and as soon as a number is either very big or very small it becomes disconcerting. On one level, I’m glad that they are able… Continue reading Numbers of Order Unity
Category: Math
The Purpling of Blogdom
Williams has long held a dominant position in a number of categories of blogging: Dan Drezner on economics and politics, Marc Lynch on the Middle East, Ethan Zuckerman on the developing world and really cool conferences, Derek Catsam on history and Red Sox fandom, yours truly on canine physics. And I’m sure I’m forgetting several… Continue reading The Purpling of Blogdom
The Swashbuckling Physicist’s Guide to Complex Numbers
Having mentioned this a few times in course reports, I thought I’d throw out a link to my lecture notes (PDF) on complex numbers. This is the one-class whirlwind review of complex numbers from defining i to Euler’s theorem about complex exponentials. To answer a slightly incredulous question from a commenter, this is necessary because… Continue reading The Swashbuckling Physicist’s Guide to Complex Numbers
Academic Set Theory
Theorem: The set of students who can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or working homework problems is always smaller than the set of students who think they can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or doing homework problems. Years of intense study have so far failed to produce… Continue reading Academic Set Theory
Course Report: Modern Physics
Back in the “Uncomfortable Questions” thread, Thony C suggested that I should do running updates on the course I’m teaching now. I meant to get to this sooner, but last weekend’s bout with norovirus kind of got in the way… I like the idea, though, so below the fold are a bunch of comments on… Continue reading Course Report: Modern Physics
Incompleteness by Rebecca Goldstein
Rebecca Goldstein’s Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel is another book in the Great Discoveries series of short books by noted authors about important moments in the history of science, and the people behind them. Previous volumes include Everything and More and A Force of Nature, both of which were excellent in their… Continue reading Incompleteness by Rebecca Goldstein
Think Before You Plot
There’s a link in today’s links dump to a post from Pictures of Numbers, a rarely-updated blog on the visual presentation of data (via Swans On Tea, I think). There’s some really good stuff there about how to make graphs that are easy to read and interpret. I would like to dissent mildly from one… Continue reading Think Before You Plot
The Visual Display of Political Information
The closing narrative of the McCain campaign is apparently going to be “Obama’s a pinko commie socialist who wants to raise your taxes,” which means it’s time for all good liberals to bust out the graphs to show why this is false. Well, graph, singular. You know the one: I don’t remember who first posted… Continue reading The Visual Display of Political Information
Innumeracy on Parade
Via Physics and Physicists, a breathtaking blog at the Washington Post proudly proclaiming the author’s ignorance of algebra: I am told that algebra is everywhere – it’s in my iPod, beneath the spreadsheet that calculates my car payments, in every corner of my building. This idea freaks me out because I just can’t see it.… Continue reading Innumeracy on Parade
The Kibble Bubble
A Colbert Report re-run about the financial crisis has just ended, so I turn the tv off, grab my jacket and the leash, and head out for a walk with the dog. She’s oddly pensive as we head up the street. After a little while, she stops and asks, “What was that all about?” “All… Continue reading The Kibble Bubble