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Category Archives: Mathematics
Contagion theory of violence
Check out this provocative open-access paper titled Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings (Towers, et al., 2015). Here is an extended excerpt (footnotes omitted): “We fit a mathematical contagion model to the data sets, with model terms that take … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Mathematics, Probability
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Math Clock
Courtesy of Geek Alert (hat tip: who else? Cliff Pickover)
Posted in Culture, Mathematics
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Dmitry Brant solves the knight’s tour problem
According to Wikipedia (emphasis in original; footnote omitted): “A knight’s tour is a sequence of moves of a knight on a chessboard such that the knight visits every square only once. If the knight ends on a square that is … Continue reading
Posted in Mathematics
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Ancient icosahedron
Via Tumblr, check out this ancient Greek die with 20 sides in the shape of an icosahedron:
Posted in Games, History, Mathematics
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Blueprints for “The Great Wall of Trump”
An engineer recently drew up a “quick design” (pictured below) of Donald Trump’s proposed USA-Mexico border wall. (You can read the full technical analysis of what it would take to build such a massive project here.) This particular design consists … Continue reading
Posted in Current Affairs, Economics, Law, Mathematics, Politics
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Gradient vector flow snakes!
In addition to this short film clip illustrating a “flow snake,” you can read more about this beautiful mathematical/fractal pattern in this formal paper by Alejandro Cartas-Ayala.
Posted in Mathematics
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How many squares (of all sizes) are on a chess board?
Shiver in awe. There are 204 squares on a checkerboard, when considering squares of all sizes. pic.twitter.com/RMi4BpqXfe — Cliff Pickover (@pickover) March 1, 2016
Posted in Mathematics
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prior probability 