Category Archives: mathematics

as we suspected

Ellipsoids can be packed denser than spheres can. (Cited by Oliver Xymoron.) One of these days I must make a doodle of this result.

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that gun gave up smoking

Dave Muse thinks the Michigan state lottery has a mechanical bias favoring smaller intervals. (Cited by Jon Handler.) So I wrote a short program that generates all C(50,6) = 1589 0700 possible lottery draws and counts the resulting intervals. The distribution … Continue reading

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grab-bag

Wanting to learn about database programming, it occurred to me to resume work on my fullerene search code. I’m a bit surprised to find that I haven’t touched it in two years. Speaking of surprises – Angel the vampire had … Continue reading

Posted in cinema, mathematics, me!me!me! | 2 Comments

fun with numbers ’n stuff

MathWorld has had a facelift.

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through a mathematician’s eye

Google claims 111 hits for group.theory square.dance OR square.dancing.

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“geek” tattoos

I’m unlikely ever to get a tattoo, but if I did, I incline to the armband type; and I just got an idea for one: a ‘Mercator projection’ of Escher’s hyperbolic fish. Instead of a circle, the horizon would be … Continue reading

Posted in arts, mathematics | 1 Comment

throw a pebble

I have long taken delight in how the Net lets me rub electrons informally with scholars such as John Conway and Larry Trask. On September 12, I wrote to Eric Weisstein of MathWorld: If the tetrahedral rotation group is isomorphic … Continue reading

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