Tagged: mathematics

Featured image: Brains are bad at big numbers, making it impossible to grasp what a million COVID-19 deaths really means

Brains are bad at big numbers, making it impossible to grasp what a million COVID-19 deaths really means - COVID-19

Guest Author • Apr 04, 2022 •

Lindsey Hasak, Stanford University and Elizabeth Y. Toomarian, Stanford University As of April 2022, there have been nearly 1 million confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. For most people, visualizing what a million of anything looks like is an impossible task. The human brain just isn’t built to comprehend such large numbers. We are two neuroscientists who study the … Read More

Featured image: Why do cauliflowers look so odd? We’ve cracked the maths behind their ‘fractal’ shape

Why do cauliflowers look so odd? We’ve cracked the maths behind their ‘fractal’ shape - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jul 09, 2021 •

Etienne Farcot, University of Nottingham   Have you ever stared at a cauliflower before preparing it and got lost in its stunningly beautiful pattern? Probably not, if you are in your right mind, but I reassure you it’s worth a try. What you’ll find is that what at first sight looks like an amorphous blob has a striking regularity. If … Read More

Featured image: Data analysis skills are in hot demand – what should we be doing about it?

Data analysis skills are in hot demand – what should we be doing about it? - Genomics Aotearoa

Genomics Aotearoa • Jul 29, 2020 •

By Associate Professor Mik Black, Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago The increased availability of complex biological data sets means that analysis and computation are becoming critically important skills for New Zealand’s future scientists. Because of this, we need to be doing everything we can to help our students develop these skills, to better prepare them for large-scale data analysis … Read More

Featured image: On the Shoulders of Giants?

On the Shoulders of Giants? - Out of Space

Duncan Steel • Mar 16, 2019 •

[avatar user=”duncansteel” size=”thumbnail” align=”right” /] Isaac Newton is often thought to be the inventor of the apparently self-deprecating phrase ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’, but he was not: actually it had been in use for over 500 years before he repeated it in 1675. Of more significance is that Newton wrote … Read More

Featured image: March ’18 – NZ blogs sitemeter ranking

March ’18 – NZ blogs sitemeter ranking - Open Parachute

Ken Perrott • Apr 02, 2018 •

Image credit: PABLO HELGUERA – Classical Cartoon At Noon: If Wagner Had A Blog I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing please check this out. Send me the URL for your site meter and I can correct the information … Read More

Featured image: Did artists lead the way in mathematics?

Did artists lead the way in mathematics? - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jan 18, 2018 •

Henry Adams, Case Western Reserve University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Mathematics and art are generally viewed as very different disciplines – one devoted to abstract thought, the other to feeling. But sometimes the parallels between the two are uncanny. From Islamic tiling to the chaotic patterns of Jackson … Read More

Featured image: Physics is a science. Or maybe not.

Physics is a science. Or maybe not. - Physics Stop

Marcus Wilson • Mar 14, 2017 •

A couple of hours ago I gave a talk to the ‘education group’ in the Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Western Australia. Broadly speaking, the audience was a group of physicists and engineers who are interested in education. I recycled a talk that I’d given a couple of years ago on the role of mathematics … Read More

Featured image: Corals, crochet and the cosmos: how hyperbolic geometry pervades the universe

Corals, crochet and the cosmos: how hyperbolic geometry pervades the universe - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jan 28, 2016 •

Margaret Wertheim, University of Melbourne We have built a world of largely straight lines – the houses we live in, the skyscrapers we work in and the streets we drive on our daily commutes. Yet outside our boxes, nature teams with frilly, crenellated forms, from the fluted surfaces of lettuces and fungi to the frilled skirts of sea … Read More

Protecting the big fish in the sea - Infrequently Asked Questions

Lynley Hargreaves • Nov 19, 2014 •

Dr Michael PlankThrow the small fish back, so they can grow and reproduce. So goes conventional scientific wisdom, as well as most of the world’s fishing regulations. But research – including Marsden-funded mathematical models by the University of Canterbury’s Michael Plank – is now showing that we should be catching more small fry, and letting the big fish go … Read More