# Monthly Archives: June 2011

## The man who know Ramanujan

An article from The Hindu about Professor Bruce Berndt. The title of the article is probably a play on the book The man who knew infinity.

Posted in Books, Number Theory, Quotes/People | Leave a comment

## An AMC problem on sieveing primes

The following is an AMC 12 problem from 2005, courtesy of the MAA Minute Math. Follow the link for an interactive version complete with hints, solutions and difficulty hosted on MAA.org. Problem: Call a number “prime-looking” if it is composite … Continue reading

Posted in Combinatorics, Number Theory, Problems | Leave a comment

## Printed vs E-books

A blog post by Nicolas Carr. I personally belong to the majority who like the convenience of e-books but almost always prefer printed books (and research papers) for reading. I’ve moved to my new office for about a month and … Continue reading

## Finance and Fibonacci

This could be an application if you believe it. Certainly it is “more scientific” than reading tea leaves. Fibonacci level. Perhaps there is some relationship, afterall both finance and fibonacci starts with the letter “f”, then again so does “fail”.

## Manga guide to calculus

by Kojima and Togami (Illustrator). This is a follow up to the well received Manga guide to Statistics, which aims to use japanese manga to teach academic subjects. Having read the book I must say, I enjoyed the back story … Continue reading

## Mnemonic Trig (or Trick)

$\cos (3x) = 4\cos^3(x) -3 \cos(x)$ The way to remember it in Hokkien (a local dialect commonly spoken in Singapore, Taiwan and southern parts of China): Cor Sah ($1.30) = Si Cor Sah ($4.30) – Sah Cor (\$3). You can … Continue reading

Posted in Calculus/Analysis, Fun Stuff, Trigonometry | Leave a comment

## The Calculus of Friendship

by Steven Strogatz. The subtitle is “What a teacher and a student learned about life while corresponding about math” and it very aptly sums up the book. Except there is a twist. It turned out the teacher was a high … Continue reading

## 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

## autologlyphs

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

## Lies, damned lies and statistics

a report on manipulating p-values in medical/clinical “research”. http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3978 the oft-quoted title is due to Benjamin Disraeli.