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Weather forecasts are getting better. Fifty years ago, predictions beyond one day ahead were of dubious utility. Now, forecasts out to a week ahead are generally reliable [TM198 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Anomaly correlation of ECMWF 500 hPa height forecasts over three decades [Image from ECMWF].
Kurt Hensel (1861-1941)
Kurt Hensel, born in Königsberg, studied mathematics in Berlin and Bonn, under Kronecker and Weierstrass; Leopold Kronecker was his doctoral supervisor. In 1901, Hensel was appointed to a full professorship at the University of Marburg. He spent the rest of his career there, retiring in 1930.
Hensel is best known for his introduction of the p-adic numbers. They evoked little interest at first but later became increasingly important in number theory and other fields. Today, p-adics are considered by number theorists as being “just as good as the real numbers”. Hensel’s p-adics were first described in 1897, and much more completely in his books, Theorie der algebraischen Zahlen, published in 1908 and Zahlentheorie published in 1913.
Image from Cover of Katok, 2007.
The motto of the Pythagoreans was “All is Number”. They saw numbers as the essence and foundation of the physical universe. For them, numbers meant the positive whole numbers, or natural numbers 
If we arrange the rational numbers on a line, there are gaps everywhere. We can fill these gaps by introducing additional numbers, which are the limits of sequences of rational numbers. This process of completion gives us the real numbers 
Pick a number; if it is even, divide it by 2; if odd, triple it and add 1. Now repeat the process, each time halving or else tripling and adding 1. Here is a surprise: no matter what number you pick, you will eventually arrive at 1. Let’s try 6: it is even, so we halve it to get 3, which is odd so we triple and add 1 to get 10. Thereafter, we have 5, 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1. From then on, the value cycles from 1 to 4 to 2 and back to 1 again, forever. Numerical checks have shown that all numbers up to one hundred million million million reach the 1–4–2–1 cycle [TM197 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Fields Medalist Professor Terence Tao.
Continue reading ‘Terence Tao to deliver the Hamilton Lecture’
Roger Penrose, British mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science has just been named as one of the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics. Penrose has made major contributions to general relativity and cosmology.
Impossible triangle sculpture in Perth, Western Australia [image Wikimedia Commons].
Continue reading ‘From Impossible Shapes to the Nobel Prize’
Applied mathematics is the use of maths to address questions and solve problems outside maths itself. Counting money, designing rockets and vaccines, analysing internet traffic and predicting the weather all involve maths. But why does this work? Why is maths so successful in describing physical reality? How is it that the world can be understood mathematically? [TM196, or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Continue reading ‘Mathematics and the Nature of Physical Reality’
As everyone knows, a torus is different from a sphere. Topology is the study of properties that remain unchanged under continuous distortions. A square can be deformed into a circle or a sphere into an ellipsoid, whether flat like an orange or long like a lemon or banana.
Continue reading ‘Doughnuts and Dumplings are Distinct: Homopoty-101’
There are ongoing rapid advances in the power and versatility of AI or artificial intelligence. Computers are now producing results in several fields that are far beyond human capability. The trend is unstoppable, and is having profound effects in many areas of our lives. Will mathematicians be replaced by computers? [TM195 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Continue reading ‘Will mathematicians be replaced by computers?’
Donald E Knuth, designer of the \TeX mathematical typesetting system.
Mathematicians owe a great debt of gratitude to Donald Knuth. A renowned American computer scientist and mathematician, Knuth is an emeritus professor at Stanford University. He is author of many books, including the multi-volume work, The Art of Computer Programming.
Knuth is the author of the powerful and versatile mathematical typesetting system called TeX. The original version, designed and written by Knuth, was released in 1978.
TeX is a powerful system for typesetting mathematical formulae. It is ideal both for simple mathematical notes with few formulas and for more complex documents and books involving subtle and sophisticated mathematical typography. TeX is used by almost all research mathematicians. It is also popular in computer science, engineering, physics, statistics, and and many other sciences.
One year ago, there were just two centibillionaires, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Recently, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has joined the Amazon and Microsoft founders. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is tipped to be next to join this exclusive club [TM194 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Let us imagine that we have a finite set 
Continue reading ‘Jung’s Theorem: Enclosing a Set of Points’
The Drake Equation is a formula for the number of developed civilizations in our galaxy, the Milky Way. This number is determined by seven factors. Some are known with good accuracy but the values of most are quite uncertain. It is a simple equation comprising seven terms multiplied together [TM193 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
A plaque commemorating the first appearance of the Drake Equation at a conference at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank, West Virginia in 1961.
Continue reading ‘Is There Anyone Out There? The Drake Equation gives a Clue’
Pick a positive integer at random. What is the chance of it being 100? What or the odds that it is even? What is the likelihood that it is prime?
Probability distribution 
Continue reading ‘Think of a Number: What are the Odds that it is Even?’
Hermann Weyl (1885-1955)
A paradox is a statement that appears to contradict itself, or that is counter-intuitive. The analysis of paradoxes has led to profound developments in mathematics and logic. One of the richest sources of paradox is the concept of infinity. Hermann Weyl, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the twentieth century, defined mathematics as “the science of the infinite” [TM192 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Ever since there has been time to wonder, humankind has been intrigued by the enigma of infinity. The idea has perplexed philosophers and mystified mathematicians for millennia. The Greeks were contemplating infinity from the time of Pythagoras. Head-on confrontation of infinity led to contradictory conclusions; the paradoxes of Zeno are amongst the most noted of these.
Continue reading ‘Resolution of Paradox: a Gateway to Mathematical Progress’
Left: Argentine-American mathematician
Gregory Chaitin [image from here]. Right: American philosopher and logician
George Boolos [image Wikimedia Commons].
THE SMALLEST NATURAL NUMBER THAT CANNOT BE
DEFINED IN FEWER THAN TWENTY WORDS.
Continue reading ‘Berry’s Paradox and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem’
Many problems in applied mathematics involve the solution of a differential equation. Simple differential equations can be solved analytically: we can find a formula expressing the solution for any value of the independent variable. But most equations are nonlinear and this approach does not work; we must solve the equation by approximate numerical means. The big question is:
“Does the numerical solution resemble the true solution of the equation?”
The answer is: “Not necessarily”.
There are often specific criteria that must be satisfied to ensure that the answer `crunched out’ by the computer is a reasonable approximation to reality. Although the principles of numerical stability are quite general, they are best illustrated by simple examples. We will look at some of these below.
Smooth curve: True solution. Black dots: stable solution. Red dots: unstable solution (time step too large).
Continue reading ‘Does Numerical Integration Reflect the Truth?’
In May 1954, Cornelius Lanczos took up a position as senior professor in the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS). The institute had been established in 1940 by Eamon de Valera, with a School of Theoretical Physics and a School of Celtic Studies, reflecting de Valera’s keen interest in mathematics and in the Irish language. Later, a School of Cosmic Physics was added. DIAS remains a significant international centre of research today [TM191 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Continue reading ‘Cornelius Lanczos – Inspired by Hamilton’s Quaternions’
Jean Buridan (c. 1300-1360).
“Buridan’s Ass” is a paradox in philosophy, in which a hungry donkey, located at the mid-point between two bales of hay, is frozen in indecision about which way to go and faces starvation — he is unable to move one way or the other.
Jean Buridan was a French philosopher who lived in the fourteenth century. He was not interested in donkeys, but in human morality. He wrote that if two courses of action are judged to be morally equal, we must suspend a decision until the right course of action becomes clear. The idea of the paradox can be found in the writings of the ancients, including Aristotle.
In 1920, a kindergarten class was asked to describe the biggest number that they could imagine. One child proposed to “write down digits until you get tired”. A more concrete idea was to write a one followed by 100 zeros. This number, which scientists would express as ten to the power 100, was given the name “googol” by its inventor [TM190; or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com ].
Suppose that, in the course of an investigation, you stumble upon a string of whole numbers. You are convinced that there must be a pattern, but you cannot find it. All you have to do is to type the string into a database called OEIS — or simply “Slone’s” — and, if the string is recognized, an entire infinite sequence is revealed. If the string belongs to several sequences, several choices are offered. OEIS is a great boon to both professional mathematicians and applied scientists in fields like physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology.
The Home page of OEIS: https://oeis.org
Continue reading ‘The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences’
It may seem too much to expect that a person’s geographic origin can be determined from a DNA sample. But, thanks to a mathematical technique called principal component analysis, this can be done with remarkable accuracy. It works by reducing multi-dimensional data sets to just a few variables [TM189; or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com ].
Predicted locations for more than 1200 individuals, based on DNA markers in their genome (figure from Nature).
Continue reading ‘The Geography of Europe is Mapped in our Genes’
We live in the age of “big data”. Voluminous data collections are mined for information using mathematical techniques. Problems in high dimensions are hard to solve — this is called “the curse of dimensionality”. Dimension reduction is essential in big data science. Many sophisticated techniques have been developed to reduce dimensions and reveal the information buried in mountains of data.
Our lives have been severely restricted in recent months. We are assured that the constraints have been imposed following “the best scientific advice”, but what is the nature of this advice? Among the most important scientific tools used for guidance on the Covid-19 outbreak are mathematical models [TM188; or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com ].
Prof Philip Nolan, Chairman of IEMAG (Photograph: Tom Honan
Learning calculus at school, we soon find out that while differentiation is relatively easy, at least for simple functions, integration is hard. So hard indeed that, in many cases, it is impossible to find a nice function that is the integral (or anti-derivative) of a given one. Thus, given 
Self-portrait by Dürer when aged 26.
Albrecht Dürer was born in Nuremberg in 1471, third of a family of eighteen children. Were he still living, he would be celebrating his 549th birthday today. Dürer’s artistic genius was clear from an early age, as evidenced by a self-portrait he painted when just thirteen [TM187; or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com ].
In 1494, Dürer visited Italy, where he travelled for a year. A novel connection between art and mathematics was emerging around that time. By using rules of perspective, artists could represent objects in three-dimensional space on a plane canvas with striking realism. Dürer was convinced that “the new art must be based upon science; in particular, upon mathematics, as the most exact, logical, and graphically constructive of the sciences”.
Continue reading ‘Changing the way that we look at the world’
The development of perspective in the early Italian Renaissance opened the doors of perception just a little wider. Perspective techniques enabled artists to create strikingly realistic images. Among the most notable were Piero della Francesca and Leon Battista Alberti, who invented the method of perspective drawing.
School of Athens, a fresco painted by Raphael in 1509-11 illustrates the power of perspective.
John Casey (1820-1891).
Next Tuesday – 12th May – is the 200th anniversary of the birth of John Casey, a notable Irish geometer. Casey was born in 1820 in Kilbeheny, Co Limerick. He was educated in nearby Mitchelstown, where he showed great aptitude for mathematics and also had a gift for languages. He became a mathematics teacher, first in Tipperary Town and later in Kilkenny [TM186; or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com ].
We open with a simple mathematical puzzle that is easily solved using only elementary reasoning. Imagine a party where some guests are friends while others are unacquainted. Then the following is always true:
No matter how many guests there are at the party, there are
always two guests with the same number of friends present.
If you wish, try proving this before reading on. The proof is outlined at the end of this post.
Complete graphs with 6 to 10 vertices.
John H Conway in 2009
[image Denise Applewhite, Princeton University].
John Horton Conway was a charismatic character, something of a performer, always entertaining his fellow-mathematicians with clever magic tricks, memory feats and brilliant mathematics. A Liverpudlian, interested from early childhood in mathematics, he studied at Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge, earning a BA in 1959. He obtained his PhD five years later, after which he was appointed Lecturer in Pure Mathematics.
In 1986, Conway moved to Princeton University, where he was Professor of Mathematics and John Von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics. He was awarded numerous honours during his career. Conway enjoyed emeritus status from 2013 until his death just two weeks ago on 11 April.
In its initial stages, the Covid-19 pandemic grew at an exponential rate. What does this mean? The number of infected people in a country is growing exponentially if it increases by a fixed multiple R each day: if N people are infected today, then R times N are infected tomorrow. The size of the growth-rate R determines how rapidly the virus is spreading. An example should make this clear [TM185 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
“Flattening the curve” [image from ECDC].
Ross-Littlewood Paradox [Image from Steemit website: here. ]
Video games generate worldwide annual sales of about $150 billion. With millions of people confined at home with time to spare, the current pandemic may benefit the industry. At the core of a video game is a computer program capable of simulating a range of phenomena in the real world or in a fantasy universe, of generating realistic imagery and of responding to the actions and reactions of the players. At every level, mathematics is crucial [TM184 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
League of Legends, from Riot Games.
Continue reading ‘The Mathematics of Fair Play in Video Games’
Typical Comic-book `bang’ mark [Image from vectorstock ].
which is approximately 
Continue reading ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Explosively Large Numbers’
The illness is called Covid-19 but the virus is known as SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2) [Image from US agency Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].
There is widespread anxiety about the threat of the Covid-19 virus. Mathematics now plays a vital role in combating the spread of epidemics, and will help us to bring this outbreak under control. For centuries, mathematics has been used to solve problems in astronomy, physics and engineering. But now biology and medicine have become topics of mathematical investigation, and applications in these areas are certain to expand in the future [TM183 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
How rapidly will the viral infection spread? How long will it remain a problem? When will it reach a peak and how quickly will it die out? Most important, what effective steps can we can take to control the outbreak and to minimize the damage caused? When vaccines become available, what is the optimal strategy for their use? Models provide valuable evidence for decision makers.
Continue reading ‘Covid-19: Modelling the evolution of a viral outbreak’
In his study of humane methods of hanging, Samuel Haughton (1866) considered the earliest recorded account of execution by hanging (see Haughton’s Drop on this site). In the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, Homer described how the twelve faithless handmaids of Penelope “lay by night enfolded in the arms of the suitors” who were vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage. Her son Telemachus, with the help of his comrades, hanged all twelve handmaids on a single rope.
Continue reading ‘Samuel Haughton and the Twelve Faithless Hangmaids’
Samuel Haughton (1821-1897).
Samuel Haughton was born in Co. Carlow in 1821. He entered Trinity College Dublin aged just sixteen and graduated in 1843. He was elected a fellow in 1844 and was appointed professor of geology in 1851. He took up the study of medicine and graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1862, aged 40 [TM182 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
In addition to his expertise in geology and medicine, Haughton was a highly talented applied mathematician. His mathematical investigations included the study of the motion of solid and fluid bodies, solar radiation, climatology, animal mechanics and ocean tides. One of his more bizarre applications of mathematics was to demonstrate a humane method of execution by hanging, by lengthening the drop to ensure instant death.
A simple transformation with remarkable properties was used by Nikolai Zhukovsky around 1910 to study the flow around aircraft wings. It is defined by
and is usually called the Joukowsky Map. We begin with a discussion of the theory of fluid flow in two dimensions. Readers familiar with 2D potential flow may skip to the section Joukowsky Airfoil.
Visualization of airflow around a Joukowsky airfoil. Image generated using code on this website.
The irregular distribution of the first digits of numbers in data-bases provides a valuable tool for fraud detection. A remarkable rule that applies to many datasets was accidentally discovered by an American physicist, Frank Benford, who described his discovery in a 1938 paper, “The Law of Anomalous Numbers” [TM181 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Continue reading ‘How many numbers begin with a 1? More than 30%!’
Around 1913, while still an undergraduate, American physicist Arthur Compton described an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth using a simple laboratory apparatus.
If you have ever tried to sleep under a flight-path near an airport, you will know how serious the problem of aircraft noise can be. Aircraft noise is amongst the loudest sounds produced by human activities. The noise is over a broad range of frequencies, extending well beyond the range of hearing. The problem of aviation noise has become more severe as aircraft engines have become more powerful [TM180 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Engine inlet of a CFM56-3 turbofan engine on a Boeing 737-400 [image Wikimedia Commons].
Finding the roots of polynomials has occupied mathematicians for many centuries. For equations up to fourth order, there are algebraic expressions for the roots. For higher order equations, many excellent numerical methods are available, but the results are not always reliable.
A 10th-order polynomial (blue) and a slightly perturbed version, with the coefficient of 
Continue reading ‘The Rambling Roots of Wilkinson’s Polynomial’
We take a fresh look at the vector differential operators grad, div and curl. There are many vector identities relating these. In particular, there are two combinations that always yield zero results:
Question: Is there a connection between these identities?
When a guitar string is plucked, we don’t see waves travelling along the string. This is because the ends are fixed. Instead, we see a standing-wave pattern. Standing waves are also found on drum-heads and on the sound-boxes of violins. The shape of a violin strongly affects the quality and purity of the sound, as it determines the mixture of standing wave harmonics that it can sustain [TM179 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
French postage stamp, issued in 2016, to commemorate the
250th anniversary of the birth of Sophie Germain (1776-1831).
Continue reading ‘The “extraordinary talent and superior genius” of Sophie Germain’
Vector analysis can be daunting for students. The theory can appear abstract, and operators like Grad, Div and Curl seem to be introduced without any obvious motivation. Concrete examples can make things easier to understand. Weather maps, easily obtained on the web, provide real-life applications of vector operators.
Fig. 1. An idealized scalar field representing the mean sea-level atmospheric pressure over the North Atlantic area.
Continue reading ‘Grad, Div and Curl on Weather Maps: a Gateway to Vector Analysis’
Soon it will be time to pack away the fairy lights. If you wish to avoid the knotty task of disentangling them next December, don’t just throw them in a box; roll them carefully around a stout stick or a paper tube. Any long and flexible string or cable, squeezed into a confined volume, is likely to become entangled: just think of garden hoses or the wires of headphones [TM178 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Mathematicians have traditionally dealt with convergent series and shunned divergent ones. But, long ago, astronomers found that divergent expansions yield valuable results. If these so-called asymptotic expansions are truncated, the error is bounded by the first term omitted. Thus, by stopping just before the smallest term, excellent approximations may be obtained.
As Christmas approaches, the question of fair sharing comes into focus. Readers can rejoice that there has been a recent breakthrough in cake-cutting theory. Cake cutting may sound limited, but it is important for many practical problems. A cake is a metaphor for a parcel of land to be divided, broadcast frequencies to be allocated, divorce settlements, chores to be done by flatmates, border resolutions or any other valuable or scarce resource to be shared [TM177 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Image from https://www.irishcentral.com/%5D
In 1985, cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov commanded a mission to repair the space station Salyut-7. During the operation, he flicked a wing-nut to remove it. As it left the end of the bolt, the nut continued to spin in space, but every few seconds, it turned over through 
Flipping nut [image from Veritasium].
Although abstract in character, mathematics has concrete origins: the greatest advances have been inspired by the natural world. Recently, a new result in linear algebra was discovered by three physicists trying to understand the behaviour of neutrinos [TM176 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
Neutrino trails in a bubble chamber [image from Physics World]
Continue reading ‘A New Mathematical Discovery from Neutrino Physics’
One of the most remarkable and important mathematical results obtained by Archimedes was the determination of the volume of a sphere. Archimedes used a technique of sub-dividing the volume into slices of known cross-sectional area and adding up, or integrating, the volumes of the slices. This was essentially an application of a technique that was — close to two thousand years later — formulated as integral calculus.
Cone, sphere and cylinder on the same base. The volumes are in the ratios 1 : 2 : 3 [image from mathigon.org].
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