Fashion...with Math!

The San Diego Union-Tribune published an article about math and fashion, today. Seemingly befuddled about categorizing this mish-mash, they placed it on the front page of the business section. The gist is that a pair of identical twin fashion designers are using the golden ratio to outfit their clients. While not exactly graduate level math, it's nice to see even fashionistas getting in on the math band wagon. The article does lean towards the mystical (even the twin thing lends to this...could they be mathematical shaman?), but one of the highlights is the golden ratio measuring contraption pictures in the article. Where, oh, where can one find such an interesting and lovely object? Anyway, the TV show "Numb3rs" where detectives fight crime with math is already a hit. Could this trend continue with shows like "What not to W3ar" and "Proj3ct Runway?" One can only hope.

Here's the article: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/apr/15/sisters-use-formula-find-perfect-fit/

Sex...with Math!

Another high school teacher has been thrown in jail for having sex with a student. This time, though, she was a math teacher with a singing career, and they had sex in her classroom!

Of the two CDs she had released, one was full of religious music, and the other was a big math medley.

Heather Lynne Zeo was a math teacher at North Penn High School in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. This story was wonderfully reported in The Philadelphia Inquire and you can find the article here.

West Virginia...with Math!

This is so cool.

The state best known for coal mining has come out with one of the coolest math machines I've ever seen. According to The State Journal Bonita Lawrence, a professor at Marshal University in Huntington, West Virginia, and her students have designed and assembled a "differential analyzer" using Erector Sets. It's Steam Punk meets Texas Instruments. You can see a video of the machine here.

So what is it?

Well, it's machine made of gears, pulleys, widgets and whatnot that actually solves differential equations and draws the solutions. Bonita claims that it can solve some nonlinear equations that calculators just approximate.

And what does this means, exactly?

Bonita gives an amazing, lucid description of differential analysis in the video. She gives an example of her maching taking in information about the velocity and acceleration of a car (the differential equation) and popping out the position of the car (the solution).

Fantastic, right? She never mentions second derivatives or initial values, and yet she described completely to a lay-person what a differential equation and its solution look like.

Why would anyone make this?

Bonita points out that before the age of computers, a machine like this gave mathematicians their first view of a solution to differential equations. Her reasoning for reinventing the wheel was that "there are so many visual learners" and that this contraption gave her students a "visual interpretation of a mathematical equation."

In a heart-warming paean to her students and to people like me, she went on to say, "My personal opinion is that math majors can do anything." I.e. Why build this machine? Because she can.

You can see a much longer interview with this charming woman here.

Brava Dr. Bonita!

P.S. In the book The Emporer's New Mind, Roger Penrose describes the brilliant and important mathematician Alan Turing developing machines just like this before World War II. Turing earned fame for breaking the Enigma Code of the Nazi Germans during the war and then developing the theory behind the "universal computing machine" (you know...the computer). He later was thrown from the Royal Academy of Sciences for being gay and forced to undergo hormone therapy to "fix" him. He took his own life some time after this.

This amazing story is captured in the play "Breaking the Code" by Hugh Whitemore.

Wolfram/Alpha...with Math!

Mathematicians across the globe are rejoicing over the mad scientist Stephen Wolfram's new toy, Wolfram/Alpha. This Google-like website is free for everyone to use, but you get oh-so-much more than you pay for.

Type in any math expression into the search box, and Wolfram/Alpha will analyze the heck out of it. This type of analysis has in the past taken an incredible amount of time, a deep understanding of the workings of the software package Mathematica, and of course it would cost an arm and a leg (Mathematica ain't free, folks).

So Wolfram/Alpha has pulled off what computer programs do best: it takes a tedious and difficult task that needs to be done repeatedly and automates it. The free aspect is just the cherry on top. Bravo, Dr. Wolfram!


Here's one of my favorite examples involving a variant on the old "bell curve." Below is one of the wonderful pictures that the engine auto-creates.

Oh, and by the way, Wolfram/Alpha holds interest for more than just math geeks. Check out the popularity of your name, the population of your city, or diagrams of your favorite molecule. Have fun!