At 2:00 AM on Sunday 28 October the clocks throughout Europe will be set back one hour, reverting to Standard Time. In many countries, the clocks are put forward one hour in Spring and set back to Standard Time in the Autumn. Daylight saving time gives brighter evenings in Summer. In Summer, the mornings are … Continue reading Saving Daylight with Hip-hop Time: a Modest Proposal
Month: October 2018
Who Uses Maths? Almost Everyone!
In the midst of Maths Week Ireland, many students may be asking “What use is mathematics and what purpose is served by studying it?” Mathematicians often stress the inherent beauty and intellectual charm of the subject, but that is unlikely to persuade many people, who demand to know how mathematics can be of use and … Continue reading Who Uses Maths? Almost Everyone!
Listing the Rational Numbers II: The Stern-Brocot Tree
The rational numbers are countable: they can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers. But it is not obvious how to construct a list that is sure to contain every rational number precisely once. In a previous post we described the Farey Sequences. Here we examine another, related, approach. The Stern-Brocot Tree We … Continue reading Listing the Rational Numbers II: The Stern-Brocot Tree
The Many Modern Uses of Quaternions
The story of William Rowan Hamilton's discovery of new four-dimensional numbers called quaternions is familiar. The solution of a problem that had bothered him for years occurred to him in a flash of insight as he walked along the Royal Canal in Dublin. But this Eureka moment did not arise spontaneously: it was the result … Continue reading The Many Modern Uses of Quaternions
ThatsMaths 