Mathematics

Usain Bolt, sprinter from Jamaica, currently holds the world record in the 100 meter sprint with a time of 9.69 seconds.  Whenever new records are set, people ask 'what is the limit on human performance?' So how fast can a human run?   Two econometricians from Tilburg University in the Netherlands, Professor of Statistics John Einmahl and former student Sander Smeets, say have calculated the ultimate records for the 100-meter sprint. The good news; there is still room for improvement in both the men's and women's times in the near future. They used extreme value theory to …

Until recently, I had only known of Thomas Carlyle as a writer, mightily significant in the 19th century, but somehow superannuated by the time I heard of him.  However, recently I learnt that he is responsible for that famous English mis-definition: A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. which he gave us while translating the Eléments de géométrie of Legendre.  The great French mathematician actually wrote "La ligne droit est le plus court chemin d'un point à un autre." where chemin means path, not distance.  Path is often denoted by the letter s, and in…

Future biology may rely more heavily on ancient math - namely algebra - according to researchers at Sweet Briar College and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech. Future generations of biologists will routinely use mathematical and computational approaches to develop and frame hypotheses, design experiments, and analyze results. Sound mathematical models are essential for this purpose and are currently used in the field of systems biology to understand complex biological networks. Two types of mathematical models, in particular, have been successfully used in biology to…

Netflix launched its million dollar contest—improve their movie rating prediction system by 10%—nearly three years ago, and like most computer science graduate students, I downloaded the data and got to work. The 10% mark proved a magic number for Netflix. 6% and the competition would have been over in a few months; 11% and it might never have ended. Next week (July 26, 2009), the winners will be announced. As this contest has been documented at some length (New York Times Magazine, Wired Magazine), I’ll skip the setup and instead describe what has been learned about predicting the ratings…

In this short post I wish to explain how to solve simple quadratic equations with Trinomial factorisation To solve a quadratic equation in this form there are two main methods you can use to solve these either trinomial (also known as quadratic) factorisation or the quadratic formula. In this article I will explain the factorisation method. In maths it is always easier to use an example than to explain with words alone. Ex1: Solve by factorisation x2 + 8x + 12 = 0 1.    Break into two brackets with an x in each: > (x ) (x     ) 2.    Find two…

Why are terrorists like the Taliban and al Qaeda or even insurgents on their home soil harder to defeat?  There are many considerations.   Politically, policy-makers want approval over any military operation that has consequences at home and intelligence information found by the military has to be calibrated. In the first study of its kind to combine military intelligence, attrition and civilian population behavior in a unified model of counterinsurgency dynamics, Moshe Kress and Roberto Szechtman of the Naval Postgraduate School stress the role of obtaining intelligence about…

"We understand the relation between houses and walls. But it would be hard to cross the gap between houses and bricks without having enough intermediate concepts such as that of the wall."(Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind, 1985) "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them."(Albert Einstein, 1920) theorem among many from which is possible to be obtained by analysis of Parcelatories, is the called Parcelatories' Powers that corresponds to the following statement: This theorem can be used to determine the veracity of the existence of integer results in several…

If you were born at a time when social security numbers were not required, you can probably recognize other people from your home state if you see or hear their numbers.    You may have thought there was a smarter system in place by now. Not so, and it's actually easy to glean a social security number,  say project lead Alessandro Acquisti, associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon's H. John Heinz III College, and Ralph Gross, a post-doctoral researcher, who have shown that public information readily gleaned from governmental sources,…

In the 360 blog (sub-heading, “12 tables, 24 chairs, and plenty of chalk”), blogger Ξ (Xi) recently wrote about “Ethiopian Multiplication” (and followed it up with a series of interesting posts on different ways to multiply, here, here, here, and here, so far). Here’s the “Ethiopian” version, as Xi tells it: Here’s the basic idea: Suppose you want to multiply two numbers like 14 and 12. You could use your fingers, of course, but here’s another way: Start with the two numbers on top. Halve one, ignoring any remainders or fractions, and double the other, stopping when you get to 1. 14&127…