Mathematics

The famous Von Neumann-Day math problem, first described by mathematician John von Neumann in 1929, has gotten a geometric solution, according to Cornell University researchers. Graduate student Yash Lodha, working with Justin Moore, professor of mathematics, has described a geometric solution for the von Neumann-Day problem, first described by mathematician John von Neumann in 1929. Graduate student Yash Lodha works in the field of geometric group theory. A group is a mathematical construct that describes the notion of the symmetries of an object, whether it's a physical object or a…

The World Series begins in a few hours and while they have to play the games, math can project winners and losers - and the math says the Boston Red Sox have a 70% chance of winning it all. Unlike a Presidential contest, which is one day and one winner but for which voters can be polled in advance, baseball incorporates a lot of variables and there are up to 7 games. And things happen during each game. There are only so many data points that can be factored in as parameters and using those parameters, statistical methods like Bayes and Markov can help you look smart at the sports bar. New…

NJIT math professor Bruce Bukiet wrote an article here on his Markov process predictions for the baseball playoffs. That wasn't something new, he is in his 13th season of doing just that, often to maddening success. How did he do this time?  The Pirates didn't advance, the Cardinals are now facing the Dodgers, but otherwise he nailed it, with the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers getting ready to square off for the pennant. The math doesn't always work; last year his numbers said Detroit would win the World Series. Nope, Giants again, my gut beat reason and sanity. But having 3 out…

A new paper uses mathematical models to examine the effect of direct and indirect social influences, otherwise known as peer pressure, on how decisions are reached on important issues. The data taken from 15 networks, including groups as disparate as U.S. school superintendents and Brazilian farmers, outline peer pressure's crucial role in society.   The authors found that combined direct and indirect social influences on a social group's collective decisions can be captured as a function of the socio-cultural distance between individuals in a social group. Their model and the empirical…

As an Applied Mathematician, I like to use mathematical modeling and computational techniques to try to better understand how things work in the world around me. One application I have studied over a number of years is how to compute the number of runs (and their distribution) for a team of baseball players with realistic data. An important aspect of baseball which distinguishes it from many other sports is that baseball can be thought of as a sequence of one on one battles – the pitcher vs. the batter – whereas in sports such as basketball, hockey and others, the other players on the court…

Tracking a fish is not as easy as you might think. The radio signals that are the backbone of traditional GPS cannot pass through seawater. But sound travels remarkably well and scientists often use acoustic telemetry to estimate an individual fish’s location. That means attaching an acoustic transmitter to a fish and then using a network of stationary underwater listening stations to monitor for the short clicking sounds that these tags emit. When a fish swims near to a receiver, its click is heard, and its individual code number is recorded. Yet even with a clicker-listener observation…

It's best not to think too much about this before your next flight but, even while on the ground,aircraft landing gear can have shimmy oscillations during taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Aircraft landing gear supports the weight of the aircraft during landing and ground operations. In addition to their wheels, landing gear also have shock absorbing equipment or "shock struts" as well as brakes, retraction mechanisms, controls, and structural entities that attach the gear to the aircraft. In a paper published in the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Journal on Applied Dynamical…

Kevin Hays, 19, of Renton, Washington, is studying math, in Arts  &  Sciences, and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis - and now he has a new world record in the Rubik's Cube, taking the top spot from ... himself. Hays solved the “6x6” Rubik’s Cube in 1 minute, 40 seconds, 9 seconds faster than his previous record. The 6 x 6 cube has 36 squares per side; that’s a total of 216 squares Hays twisted and turned into perfect alignment.  For comparison, most of us grew up trying (and failing) to solve  it did so with a standard 3 x 3 cube, which has nine…

A statistical model based on risk factors says it can predict the probability (absolute risk) of a woman developing breast, ovarian, and endometrial (womb) cancer using easily obtainable information on known risk factors for these cancers. The authors developed these models by using information from two large US studies that included white, non-Hispanic women aged over 50 years and by including commonly known risk factors, such as parity (the number of children a women delivered), body mass index (an indicator of the amount of body fat), use of oral contraceptives, and menopausal status and…

There is a heated national debate about gun control. Two mathematicians have designed parameters they say can help best prevent both one-on-one killings and mass shootings in the United States. Their findings, that properly-enforced gun laws will help, are not new. Like hockey, 'enforce the rules we already have' would seem to apply to guns. Instead, the cultural focus is on 'assault weapons', a tiny fraction of gun homicides, while ignoring the psychiatric common denominator and that the overwhelming number of gun deaths are suicides - not mass shootings.  Shooting sprees happen just as…