It's true. You can even send a LOLcat/pi-punning e-card. That is, If you want to show what a colossal dorkasaurus you are.
The BBC has a fun article chock full of fun pi facts (e.g., today's also Einstein's birthday) and history (the current record for digits-computed is 1.24 trillion).
If you've committed as many traffic infractions as I have, you find yourself taking the bus a lot. In the process, you'll encounter an existential question that the great minds of our generations have pondered and quickly forgotten: If the bus is late on my way to get KFC, should I start walking or wait for the late, drunk bus driver?
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a solution: Waiting around for the bus is almost always the smarter choice. Harvard mathematician Scott Kominers and friends devised a formula to measure the optimal time that you should hang out waiting for a late bus at each stop before deciding to walk. When both options are reasonably attractive, you're better served by waiting than by going on ahead. The formula only breaks down in extreme cases — say, when the time interval between buses is more than an hour, or when your destination is a kilometer or less away.
Continue reading 'Lazy asses got it right — wait for the bus' >
The Republican showdown on YouTube wasn’t the only debate raging on Wednesday. In New York, scientists and scholars gathered at the National Academy of Design to weigh in on the art/science question that won’t go away: can you use fractal analysis to authenticate art?
Continue reading 'Another round of the Pollock fractal debate!' >
It's not news, but it's notable... November 27 marks the 253rd anniversary of the death of French mathematician Abraham de Moivre. Sure, you may remember him for his eponymous formula, or his contributions to statistics, but the legend of his death gets top billing today.
As the story goes, de Moivre began to increase his sleeping time by 15 minutes per night. (Some sources say 20.) As a mathematician, Abraham recognized an arithmetic progression when he saw it; as a human being, he knew that this was no infinite series. He predicted that the same day that he attained 24 full hours of sleep, he would cast off his mortal coils and never wake up. (The day was November 27...) His official cause of death was "somnolence."
(As a new parent, I’d give my right leg for 15 minutes more sleep.)
Continue reading 'RIP Abraham de Moivre: What if you knew when you were going to die?' >
The same mathematicians who last year introduced the world’s first “invisibility cloak” have a new show for 2007: Wormholes on Earth!
A “wormhole” is a short-cut in the fabric of space-time, a hypothetical tunnel that could carry you light-years away—or back in time. Or both. A time machine! A transporter! (You can picture a worm crawling along the surface of an apple, and suddenly realizing, hey! I can get to other side faster if I just dig a hole through the middle!)
Continue reading 'Wormholes: They’re not just for outer space anymore' >
Man, I've shredded plenty of sweet pow in my day, and all I ever came up with was a Unified Theory of Rad (it got rejected by the Institute for Advanced Study). But physicist-surfer-snowboarder-Burning-Man-attendee Garrett Lisi has constructed a compelling "theory of everything" based on analyzing an elegant, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern known as E8. Even Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is smitten, describing Lisi's work as both "fabulous" and "one of the most compelling unification models I've seen in many, many years."
Hmmph. Lee Smolin never called me fabulous.
Continue reading 'Surfing physicist may have found compelling Theory of Everything, brah' >
Sure, sure, we all saw that haunting illustration of a bat’s wings that won first place for informational graphic in Science magazine’s 2007 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. And we saw the other winners, too, including the arresting photo of “What’s Behind our Nose?” and that Irish moss, pulled from the sea, that looks like an alien made entirely out of hands and fingers. (Click here to check out the winners’ gallery.)
But I’ve seen little mention of a video that explains, with elegance and simplicity, a nifty utensil from the geometer’s toolbox. (Th
