In what way is mathematics dangerous? This past year, the Williams College Gaudino program has been looking at the idea of danger. Hence my question, in what way is mathematics dangerous? Maybe there is emotional danger, as the media mocks the typical math professor as nerdy and… Continue reading »
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 »
Introductory proof writing is much like English as a Second Language. Developing written mathematical skills involves wrestling with issues of vocabulary, word choice, grammar, word order, punctuation, native expressions and (after enough experience) eventuates in fluency in the foreign language of mathematics. This analogy can provide a natural… Continue reading »
The hot hand is a term used in basketball to describe a player making a series of successful throws at the basket, i.e., getting “hot”. But it seems that we, as humans, are too fast at jumping at the conclusion that someone is “hot” just because we saw… Continue reading »
A typical professor in the science division at Williams college has three key items on the agenda: teach courses, publish research papers, and apply for grants. Teaching and research are the bread and butter of being a faculty member, but receiving funding from a grant agency (such as… Continue reading »
One of the greatest toys ever invented, the Rubik’s Cube celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2010. With more than 300 million cubes sold worldwide, it is still one of the most popular puzzles in the world. The Hungarian professor and architect Ernő Rubik, the inventor of the cube,… Continue reading »
Continuing our strong performance in last year’s Putnam Competition, the Williams team (comprised from Nick Arnosti, Carlos Dominguez, Jake Levinson and Wei Sun) placed 17th in North America, with all four scoring in the top 500 of over 3000 students. Click here for the problems and… Continue reading »
I have been spending my sabbatical this year at MSRI and the University of California, Berkeley. I cannot complain about the great interaction with faculty from all over the world, and the wonderful “sunny and 65” days in the Bay area. So why did I spend… Continue reading »
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 »
Since soap bubbles minimizing surface area or energy provide the typical model for my research in the calculus of variations, I receive lots of related and unrelated reports from friends. My former student Kevin Hahm ’07 sent me a link to an amazing video of water droplets… Continue reading »