Category Archives: General

How Not To Excel

Apparently a couple of influential papers — by two world famous economists Reinhart and Rogoff from Harvard — that were quoted by politicians to shape policies contain serious errors that invalidated their claims. They made the common mistake of not … Continue reading

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Lightning Bolt

Advertisement from the local newspaper. I think they were trying to sell fast broadband or something. Although it’s nice and catchy but it’s not quite scientific. I figured I read (and understood) the sentence in about 2 seconds. Google tells … Continue reading

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Wiskunde

is Dutch for mathematics. And according to a Dutch mathematician “wis” is smart and “kunde” is knowledge. The word was invented by Stevin. (Note: the wikipedia page has it as “the art of what is certain.” though.)

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The Rewards of Honesty

The New York Times published an article – which was re-published in the local papers – about a former mathematics professor Kim Myungho who self-published a book decrying the Korean judiciary. (Note the word “published” appeared thrice in the previous … Continue reading

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Check your facts

I’m one of those who first reaction is to “google it” when I want to check some fact. I even had a first generation SSD netbook which boots up in less than one minute to allow me to check things … Continue reading

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Strange inequalities in Singapore law

Singapore has very strict laws on drug trafficking. Anyone found with more than 15 grams of heroin faces mandatory capital punishment. I remember learning this fact in primary school. Even on Singapore Airlines flights into Singapore, this fact would be … Continue reading

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gnuplot with PGF/tikz

One downside about writing calculus lecture notes has always been drawing graphs. They just take up too much time. What I used to do was to use whatever software at my disposal (usually powerpoint) and created jpeg to embed into … Continue reading

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IQ tests

I’ve never liked IQ tests. I had my share of SATs and Maths competitions when I was young but do not recall ever having my IQ checked. Having interacted with very smart people from over the world, I have my … Continue reading

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Hardcopy vs electronic reprints

One of the little joys in the academic life is when you finally receive the hardcopy reprints of your published paper. I guess it is an antiquated practice dating back before the electronic era. In days of old, when manuscripts … Continue reading

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Astronomical numbers

I snapped the above picture from the newspapers. It came from a protest of Korean students against the high university fees. 4,500 vs 4,500,000 (won that is) is a 1:1000 ratio. Surely something has to be done! But then, a … Continue reading

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autologlyphs

morphing maths with art by Henry Segerman. Cool stuff. I especially liked the mirror symmetry one. As usual, found via J. Cook.

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A $23 million dollar book

A very interesting post. http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 It is not merely the astronomical price tag but the clever detective work that figured out what lead to the crazy price and is a good example of how algorithms can go wrong. Finally it … Continue reading

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Math in movies

Here’s a collection of snippets of movies where maths appears in one way or another. A few notable ones are missing perhaps due to the unavailability of clips. A few off the top of my head are Good Will Hunting, … Continue reading

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Best Jobs 2011

http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-best-jobs-2011 Being a mathematicians is apparently the second best job after a software engineer. Note it is almost impossible to interpret the result beyond the ranking. Overall score is 60 for first place and 73 for the second place. So … Continue reading

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Greenhouse effect

I learnt from an article of Martin Walter from the November issue of the Notices of AMS 2010 that it was Fourier who created the term “greenhouse effect.”

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20102010: Banning cigarette sale

Today is 20102010, my favourite date of the year. I was wondering what interesting stuff could I blog to log this day into posterity – or at least the archives of this blog. Problem solved when I read in the … Continue reading

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Nefarious Numbers

is an article by Douglas Arnold and Kristine Fowler (a librarian whom I guess did most of the digging) about how impact factors can be manipulated. They pull no punches and it’s worth your time reading if you are impacted … Continue reading

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mean wealth

An interesting report appeared in the local papers about Singapore being the fourth wealthiest nation in terms of estimated net worth. The news in itself was not as interesting as the actual figures that was estimated. Mean net worth : … Continue reading

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Math video

There are lots of nice videos out there which would be ideal to show to students before lectures or during breaks just to break the monotony. Here’s one about Fibonacci numbers and nature that’s pretty impressive, although I don’t think … Continue reading

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World Environment Day and 17291

Yesterday (5th June) was World Environment Day. I wouldn’t say I’m a green fanatic but I do try my best to recycle, use the air conditioner only when it is unbearable and bring my own non-plastic shopping bags whenever I … Continue reading

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