## Archive for December, 2014

### Fermat’s Christmas Theorem

Albert Girard (1595-1632) was a French-born mathematician who studied at the University of Leiden. He was the first to use the abbreviations ‘sin’, ‘cos’ and ‘tan’ for the trigonometric functions.

Left: Albert Girard (1595-1632). Right: Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665)

### Information Theory

That’s Maths in The Irish Times this week (TM059, or Search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com) is about data compression and its uses in modern technology.

Left: An equation form Shannon (1948), the paper that launched Information Theory.
A large number of curves, called special curves, have been studied by mathematicians. A curve is the path traced out by a point moving in space. To keep things simple, we assume that the point is confined to two-dimensional Euclidean space ${\mathbb{R}^2}$ so that it generates a plane curve as it moves. This, a curve results from a mapping ${\mathbf{\gamma} : [a,b]\longrightarrow \mathbb{R}^2}$. Continue reading ‘New Curves for Old: Inversion’