Badiou and Mathematics

I’d encourage mathematicians to look at Alain Badiou’s Being and Event and Logic of Worlds. Both are full of a lot of ideas. What mathematician cannot be thrilled by the statement in the introduction to Being and Event that “mathematics is ontology.” More directly, reading Badiou made… Continue reading »

Gaudino Lunches

Earlier on this blog I wrote “Math departments are full of smart people.  But with the demands (and joys) of research and teaching (and of our personal lives), most people in math departments do not talk to each other about math nearly enough.  Certainly that is true… Continue reading »

Transferrific Day

Transferrific Day was January 22, 2010 for the Williams Math/Stat department. For a number of years we have taken a day (or  an afternoon) in January to learn together some area of math. This year we used as a springboard David Ruelle’s Dynamical Zeta Functions and Transfer Operators (… Continue reading »

Dada Math

Math departments are full of smart people.  But with the demands (and joys) of research and teaching (and of our personal lives), most people in math departments do not talk to each other about math nearly enough.  Certainly that is true at Williams.  We do have a fairly… Continue reading »