I don't believe that responsible people should indulge in anything that can be even remotely considered ultimatums or threats. That is not the way to reach peaceful solutions.—President Eisenhower, July 8, 1959. Daniel Ellsberg and the science of extortion Bill Casselman University of British Columbia Daniel Ellsberg died just lastRead More →
Different sampling approaches exist that target different sub-populations to make sure they appear in the sample. To see these sampling approaches at work we are going to sample lines from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”… Sampled Poems Contain Multitudes Sara Stoudt Bucknell University The basic principle of statistical inferenceRead More →
Inevitably, I think back to my favorite result in mathematics: when Diaconis used the representation theory of the symmetric group to show us that psychologists just don’t get along… What I Think About When I Think About Voting Sarah Wolff Denison University It’s November. Here in Ohio, that means cozyRead More →
Who might have realized that when the mathematics community studied the properties of cubes, they might be used in error correction technology? Correcting Errors Joe Malkevitch York College (CUNY) Introduction Humans sometimes make errors. Perhaps you have been sloppy with a calculation on a mathematics examination. You made an error.Read More →
As a statistician, I had to put a little extra wrinkle in. How might I add an element of chance to the endeavor of writing a sestina? A Summer set.seed() Sestina Sara Stoudt Bucknell University Are you taking a break from mathematical thoughts and cozying up with a good beachRead More →
One of the fundamental forces in the universe is the weak force. The weak force is involved in holding atoms together or breaking them apart... Putting a period on mathematical physics Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) You've heard of periods at the ends of sentences and periods of sine waves.Read More →
Up until recently, all known aperiodic tilings used a minimum of two shapes, and it has long been a major problem to find a tiling that uses just one. Quite recently this problem has been solved, although only with a qualification… Hat Tricks Bill Casselman University of British Columbia “ButRead More →
There are other ways to compare rational numbers, especially if one happens to enjoy number theory... A Different Sense of Distance Maria Fox Oklahoma State University Dedicated to my Dad, Dr. Barry R. Fox. The idea of distance is central to so much of the mathematics we do and teachRead More →
If one has a pattern on a band, frieze, or strip (disregarding color if as often happens more than one color appears), regardless of the artistic content of what one sees, there are exactly 7 different patterns that are possible… Remembering Donald W. Crowe Maker of Connections between Symmetry, ArtRead More →
I would like to discuss the Jordan curve theorem as part of an intrinsic human activity: storytelling. The Jordan Curve Theorem as a Lusona Allechar Serrano López Harvard University Introduction The Jordan curve theorem is a result in topology that states that every Jordan curve (a plane simple closed curve)Read More →