Posts Tagged 'Number Theory'

The “extraordinary talent and superior genius” of Sophie Germain

Published January 16, 2020 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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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].

Sophie-Germain-Stamp

French postage stamp, issued in 2016, to commemorate the
250th anniversary of the birth of Sophie Germain (1776-1831).

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Spiralling Primes

Published September 12, 2019 Occasional Leave a Comment
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SacksSpiral100k

The Sacks Spiral.

The prime numbers have presented mathematicians with some of their most challenging problems. They continue to play a central role in number theory, and many key questions remain unsolved.

Order and Chaos

The primes have many intriguing properties. In his article “The first 50 million prime numbers”, Don Zagier noted two contradictory characteristics of the distribution of prime numbers. The first is the erratic and seemingly chaotic way in which the primes “grow like weeds among the natural numbers”. The second is that, when they are viewed in the large, they exhibit “stunning regularity”.

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Closing the Gap between Prime Numbers

Published April 18, 2019 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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​Occasionally, a major mathematical discovery comes from an individual working in isolation, and this gives rise to great surprise. Such an advance was announced by Yitang Zhang six years ago. [TM161 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].

Yitang-Zhang-Colour

Yitang Zhang

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Massive Collaboration in Maths: the Polymath Project

Published April 11, 2019 Occasional Leave a Comment
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Sometimes proofs of long-outstanding problems emerge without prior warning. In the 1990s, Andrew Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. More recently, Yitang Zhang announced a key result on bounded gaps in the prime numbers. Both Wiles and Zhang had worked for years in isolation, keeping abreast of developments but carrying out intensive research programs unaided by others. This ensured that they did not have to share the glory of discovery, but it may not be an optimal way of making progress in mathematics.

Polymath

Timothy-Gowers-2012-Half

Timothy Gowers in 2012 [image Wikimedia Commons].

Is massively collaborative mathematics possible? This was the question posed in a 2009 blog post by Timothy Gowers, a Cambridge mathematician and Fields Medal winner. Gowers suggested completely new ways in which mathematicians might work together to accelerate progress in solving some really difficult problems in maths. He envisaged a forum for the online discussion of problems. Anybody interested could contribute to the discussion. Contributions would be short, and could include false routes and failures; these are normally hidden from view so that different workers repeat the same mistakes.

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Multiple Discoveries of the Thue-Morse Sequence

Published February 21, 2019 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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It is common practice in science to name important advances after the first discoverer or inventor. However, this process often goes awry. A humorous principle called Stigler’s Law holds that no scientific result is named after its original discoverer. This law was formulated by Professor Stephen Stigler of the University of Chicago in his publication “Stigler’s law of eponymy”. He pointed out that his “law” had been proposed by others before him so it was, in a sense, self-verifying. [TM157 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].

Axel Thue (1863-1922) and Marston Morse (1892-1977)
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Really, 0.999999… is equal to 1. Surreally, this is not so!

Published January 10, 2019 Occasional Leave a Comment
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The value of the recurring decimal 0.999999 … is a popular topic of conversation amongst amateur mathematicians of various levels of knowledge and expertise. Some of the discussions on the web are of little value or interest, but the topic touches on several subtle and deep aspects of number theory.

999999

[Image Wikimedia Commons]

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Random Numbers Plucked from the Atmosphere

Published December 6, 2018 Irish Times Leave a Comment
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Randomness is a slippery concept, defying precise definition. A simple example of a random series is provided by repeatedly tossing a coin. Assigning “1” for heads and “0” for tails, we generate a random sequence of binary digits or bits. Ten tosses might produce a sequence such as 1001110100. Continuing thus, we can generate a sequence of any length having no discernible pattern [TM152 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].

Lightning-01

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