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Asa Butterfield as Nathan Ellis in X+Y.
How can mathematicians grapple with abstruse concepts that are, for the majority of people, beyond comprehension? What mental processes enable a small proportion of people to produce mathematical work of remarkable creativity? In particular, is there a connection between mathematical creativity and autism? We revisit a book and a film that address these questions.
Marshallese canoe sailing on Majuro Lagoon. Image from: www.canoesmarshallislands.com
For thousands of years, the Marshall Islanders of Micronesia have been finding their way around a broadly dispersed group of low-lying islands, navigating apparently without effort from one atoll to another one far beyond the horizon. They had no maps or magnetic compass, no clocks, no weather forecasts and certainly no GPS or SatNav equipment [TM236 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Continue reading ‘The Navigational Skills of the Marshall Islanders’
The Approximating Functions
It is simple to define a mapping from the unit interval ![{I := [0,1]}](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%7BI+%3A%3D+%5B0%2C1%5D%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0&c=20201002)
![{Q:=[0,1]\times[0,1]}](https://s0.wp.com/latex.php?latex=%7BQ%3A%3D%5B0%2C1%5D%5Ctimes%5B0%2C1%5D%7D&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0&c=20201002)
Continue reading ‘Space-Filling Curves, Part II: Computing the Limit Function’
We are all familiar with the concept of dimension: a point is zero-dimensional, a line is one-dimensional, a plane is two-dimensional and the space around us is three-dimensional. A position on a line can be specified by a single number, such as the distance from a fixed origin. In the plane, a point can be located by giving its Cartesian coordinates 
Continue reading ‘Space-Filling Curves, Part I: “I see it, but I don’t believe it”’
ThatsMaths 