Feature Column Archive

Feature Column Authors


The Archive

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2019

You’re in for a shock by David Austin
December 2019 Why 95% ? by Bill Casselman
November 2019 Topological Quantum Field Theory for Vampires by Ursula Whitcher
October 2019 Pretty as a Picture (Part II) by Joe Malkevitch
September 2019 Puppies, Kittens, and the Golden Ratio by David Austin
August 2019 Understanding Kepler III–Predecessors by Bill Casselman
June 2019 Topology and Elementary Electric Circuit Theory, II: Duality by Tony Phillips
May 2019 Pretty as a Picture (Part I) by Joe Malkevitch
April 2019 Non-negative Matrix Factorizations by David Austin
March 2019 Understanding Kepler II–Earth’s Motion by Bill Casselman
February 2019 Branko Grunbaum Remembered–A Great Geometer! by Joe Malkevitch
January 2019


2018

Upgrading Slums Using Topology by David Austin
December 2018 Understanding What Kepler Did–Part I by Bill Casselman
November 2018 Topology and Elementary Electric Circuit Theory, I by Tony Phillips
October 2018 Recognition by Joe Malkevitch
September 2018 Getting in Sync by David Austin
August 2018 Reading the Bakhshali Manuscript by Bill Casselman
June 2018 Crochet Topology by Moira Chas
May 2018 Mathematical Economics for Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month by Joe Malkevitch
April 2018 Neural Nets and How They Learn by David Austin
March 2018 Jakob Bernoulli’s Zoo by Bill Casselman
February 2018 Regular-Faced Polyhedra: Remembering Norman Johnson by Joe Malkevitch
January 2018


2017

How to Differentiate with a Computer by David Austin
December 2017 Solar Daze by Bill Casselman
November 2017 The Early History of Calculus Problems, II by Tony Phillips
October 2017 Ranking, Grading, and Genealogy by Joe Malkevitch
September 2017 Untangling Your Square Dance by David Austin
August 2017 The Joy of Barycentric Subdivision by Bill Casselman
June 2017 Surface Topology in Bach Canons, II: The Torus by Tony Phillips
May 2017 Remembering Bill Thurston (1946-2012) by Joe Malkevitch
April 2017 Patterns in Permutations by David Austin
March 2017 Assembly Required by Bill Casselman
February 2017 Building Trees for Biologists by Joe Malkevitch
January 2017


2016

Finding Holes in the Data by David Austin
December 2016 Circles and Squares … and Primes by Bill Casselman
November 2016 Surface Topology in Bach Canons, I: The Mobius strip by Tony Phillips
October 2016 Theoretical Mathematics Finds Use in Economics–A Tribute to Lloyd Shapley by Joe Malkevitch
September 2016 Game. SET. Polynomial. by David Austin
August 2016 The Legend of Abraham Wald by Bill Casselman
June 2016 The Early History of Calculus Problems by Tony Phillips
May 2016 Mathematics and Crystal Balls by Joe Malkevitch
April 2016 Knot Quandaries Quelled by Quandles by David Austin
March 2016 It Just Keeps Piling Up! by Bill Casselman
February 2016 Are Precise Definitions a Good Idea? by Joe Malkevitch
January 2016


2015

Petals, Flowers and Circle Packings by David Austin
December 2015 Circles and Squares by Bill Casselman
November 2015 Hidden Symmetries of Labyrinths from Antiquity and the Middle Ages by Tony Phillips
October 2015 Mathematics and Ecology by Joe Malkevitch
September 2015 Game. SET. Line. by David Austin
August 2015 Sums and Integrals: The Swiss analysis knife by Bill Casselman
June 2015 Math and the Sewing Machine by Tony Phillips
May 2015 Mathematical Careers by Joe Malkevitch
April 2015 The Stable Marriage Problem and School Choice by David Austin
March 2015 The Mathematics of the Rainbow, Part II by Bill Casselman
February 2015 Mathematics and Psychology by Joe Malkevitch
January 2015


2014

How to Grow and Prune a Classification Tree by David Austin
December 2014 Why Do We Expect Lots of Twin Primes? by Bill Casselman
November 2014 The Topology of Impossible Spaces by Tony Phillips
October 2014 Mathematics and Chemistry: Partners in Understanding Our World by Joe Malkevitch
September 2014 Congressional Redistricting and Gerrymandering by David Austin
August 2014 Feeling Your Way Around in High Dimensions by Bill Casselman
June 2014 The Knots in the Quipu, and in the Friar’s Belt by Tony Phillips
May 2014 Magical Mathematics – A Tribute to Martin Gardner by Joe Malkevitch
April 2014 How to Make a 3D Print by David Austin
March 2014 Stereographic Projection by Bill Casselman
February 2014 Periods by Joe Malkevitch
January 2014


2013

The Polish Attack on Enigma II: Zygalski sheets by Bill Casselman
December 2013 Fedorov’s Five Parallelohedra by David Austin
November 2013 Spherical Dodecahedral Space by Tony Phillips
October 2013 Words and More Words by Joe Malkevitch
September 2013 The Frobenius Problem: How I bought Chicken McNuggets with exact change by David Austin
August 2013 More ENIGMA by Bill Casselman
June 2013 Galileo’s Arithmetic by Tony Phillips
May 2013 Sustainability by Joe Malkevitch
April 2013 Using Projective Geometry to Correct a Camera by David Austin
March 2013 How to Read QR Symbols Without Your Mobile Telephone by Bill Casselman
February 2013 Hurricane Sandy Meets Mathematics by Joe Malkevitch
January 2013


2012

Who’s Number 1? Hodge Theory Will Tell Us by David Austin
December 2012 Can You Do Better? by Bill Casselman
November 2012 William Thurston by Tony Phillips
October 2012 Mathematical Modeling by Joe Malkevitch
September 2012 It’s a Small World After All by David Austin
August 2012 What Does a Circle Look Like? by Bill Casselman
June 2012 Old Babylonian Multiplication and Reciprocal Tables by Tony Phillips
May 2012 More Precious than Gold? by Joe Malkevitch
April 2012 A (Very Short) Detour for the Traveling Salesman by David Austin
March 2012 Archimedes on the Circumference and Area of a Circle by Bill Casselman
February 2012 Weird Rulers by Joe Malkevitch
January 2012


2011

Arrangements and Duality or How I Learned to Slice a Ham and Cheese Sandwich by David Austin
December 2011 Fragments of Greek Mathematics by Bill Casselman
November 2011 X-ray Crystallography and the Fourier Transform by Tony Phillips
October 2011 Going, Going, …, Gone! by Joe Malkevitch
September 2011 The Shadow Knows: How to measure time with a sundial by David Austin
August 2011 What’s Normal? by Bill Casselman
June 2011 How Not to Square the Circle by Tony Phillips
May 2011 Complexity by Joe Malkevitch
April 2011 Aligning Sequence Reads to Assemble the Genome Puzzle by David Austin
March 2011 Why Only Five? by Bill Casselman
February 2011 The Price of Anarchy by Joe Malkevitch
January 2011


2010

How Many Times Do I Have to Shuffle This Deck? by David Austin
December 2010 Geometry and the Discrete Fourier Transform by Patrick Ion
November 2010 Farey Numbers and the Magnetic Cactus by Tony Phillips
October 2010 Who Won! by Joe Malkevitch
September 2010 Multiplication is Easier When It’s Complex by David Austin
August 2010 How Did Escher Do It? by Bill Casselman
June 2010 From Pascal’s Triangle to the Bell-shaped Curve by Tony Phillips
May 2010 Mathematics and Sports by Joe Malkevitch
April 2010 Moving Remy in Harmony: Pixar’s Use of Harmonic Functions by David Austin
March 2010 Crypto Graphics by Bill Casselman
February 2010 Keep on Trucking by Joe Malkevitch
January 2010


2009

Puzzling Over Exact Cover Problems by David Austin
December 2009 Marian Rejewski and the First Break into Enigma by Bill Casselman
November 2009 A Non-Commutative Marriage System in the South Pacific by Tony Phillips
October 2009 School Choice by Joe Malkevitch
September 2009 We Recommend a Singular Value Decomposition by David Austin
August 2009 How Much Longer Can This Go On? by Bill Casselman
June 2009 Simon Newcomb and “Natural Numbers” (Benford’s Law) by Tony Phillips
May 2009 Mathematics and Climate by Joe Malkevitch
April 2009 No Static at All: Frequency modulation and music synthesis by David Austin
March 2009 The Mathematics of Rainbows by Bill Casselman
February 2009 People Making a Difference by Joe Malkevitch
January 2009


2008

“Trees, Teeth, and Time: The mathematics of clock making by David Austin
December 2008 From Bézier to Bernstein by Bill Casselman
November 2008 Inside-out Frieze Symmetries in Ancient Peruvian Weavings by Tony Phillips
October 2008 Gray Codes by Joe Malkevitch
September 2008 Percolation: Slipping through the Cracks by David Austin
August 2008 The Mathematics of Surveying: Part II. The Planimeter by Bill Casselman, John Eggers
June 2008 The Mathematics of Surveying: Part I by Tony Phillips
May 2008 The Process of Electing a President by Joe Malkevitch
April 2008 Random Numbers: Nothing Left to Chance by David Austin
March 2008 What is the Length of a Year on Planet Sitnikov? by Bill Casselman
February 2008 Urban Geometry by Joe Malkevitch
January 2008


2007

Pulling Digits out of Pi by David Austin
December 2007 Strange Associations by Bill Casselman
November 2007 Taxi! by Joe Malkevitch
October 2007 Image Compression: Seeing What’s Not There by David Austin
September 2007 Time and the Hour Running Through Rough Days by Bill Casselman
August 2007 The Mathematics Behind Quantum Computing: Part II by Tony Phillips
June 2007 The Mathematics Behind Quantum Computing: Part I by Tony Phillips
May 2007 Mathematics and the Brain by Joe Malkevitch
April 2007 That Knotty DNA by David Austin
March 2007 All for Nought by Bill Casselman
February 2007 Rationality and Game Theory by Joe Malkevitch
January 2007


2006

How Google Finds Your Needle in the Web’s Haystack by David Austin
December 2006 Lorenz and Modular Flows: A Visual Introduction by Étienne Ghys, Jos Leys
November 2006 The Princess of Polytopia: Alicia Boole Stott and the 120-cell by Tony Phillips
October 2006 Finite Geometries? by Joe Malkevitch
September 2006 Voronoi Diagrams and a Day at the Beach by David Austin
August 2006 Simple Chaos – The Hénon map by Bill Casselman
June 2006 The Octosphericon and the Cretan Maze by Tony Phillips
May 2006 Mathematics and Internet Security by Joe Malkevitch
April 2006 When Kissing Involves Trigonometry by David Austin
March 2006 Variations on Graph Minor by Bill Casselman
February 2006 Trees: A Mathematical Tool for All Seasons by Joe Malkevitch
January 2006


2005

Penrose Tilings Tied up in Ribbons by David Austin
December 2005 The Mathematical Uncertainty Principle by Tony Phillips
November 2005 Mental Calculation by Bill Casselman
October 2005 Sales and Chips by Joe Malkevitch
September 2005 Penrose Tiles Talk Across Miles by David Austin
August 2005 Topology of Venn Diagrams by Tony Phillips
June 2005 Slingshots and Space Shots by Bill Casselman
May 2005 Mathematics and Cosmology by Joe Malkevitch
April 2005 Resolving Bankruptcy Claims by Joe Malkevitch
March 2005 The Center of Population of the United States by David Austin
February 2005 Euler’s Polyhedral Formula: Part II by Joe Malkevitch
January 2005


2004

Euler’s Polyhedral Formula by Joe Malkevitch
December 2004 Mathematical Marriages by Joe Malkevitch
November 2004 Voting Games: Part II by Joe Malkevitch
October 2004 Voting Games: Part I by Joe Malkevitch
September 2004 Machine Scheduling by Joe Malkevitch
August 2004 Bin Packing and Machine Scheduling by Joe Malkevitch
June 2004 Bin Packing by Joe Malkevitch
May 2004 Networks by Joe Malkevitch
April 2004 Diagonals: Part II by Joe Malkevitch
March 2004 Diagonals: Part I by Joe Malkevitch
February 2004 Cubes by Joe Malkevitch
January 2004


2003

Colorful Mathematics: Part IV by Joe Malkevitch
December 2003 Colorful Mathematics: Part III by Joe Malkevitch
November 2003 Colorful Mathematics: Part II by Joe Malkevitch
October 2003 Colorful Mathematics: Part I by Joe Malkevitch
September 2003 A Discrete Geometrical Gem by Joe Malkevitch
August 2003 Primes by Joe Malkevitch
June 2003 Oriented Matroids: The Power of Unification by Joe Malkevitch
May 2003 Mathematics and Art by Joe Malkevitch
April 2003 Combinatorial Games (Part II) -Different Moves for Left and Right by Joe Malkevitch
March 2003 Digital Revolution (III) – Error Correction Codes by Joe Malkevitch
February 2003 Matroids: The Value of Abstraction by Joe Malkevitch
January 2003


2002

Combinatorial Games (Part I): The World of Piles of Stones by Joe Malkevitch
December 2002 Linkages (Part II) – Old Wine in New Bottles by Joe Malkevitch
November 2002 October: Digital Revolution (II) – Compression Codes and Technologies by Joe Malkevitch
October 2002 September: Linkages: From Fingers to Robot Arms (I) Introduction by Joe Malkevitch
September 2002 July/August: The Digital Revolution (I) – Barcodes: Introduction by Joe Malkevitch
August 2002 Apportionment II by Joe Malkevitch
June 2002 Apportionment I by Joe Malkevitch
May 2002 Mathematics and the Genome by Joe Malkevitch
April 2002 Voting and Elections by Joe Malkevitch
March 2002 Nets: A Tool for Representing Polyhedra in Two Dimensions by Joe Malkevitch
February 2002 Alberti’s Perspective Construction by Tony Phillips
January 2002


2001

Topology and Verb Classes by Tony Phillips
December 2001 Finite-dimensional Feynman Diagrams by Tony Phillips
November 2001 The Romance of Double-Entry Bookkeeping by Tony Phillips
October 2001 Latin Squares in Practice and in Theory II by Tony Phillips
September 2001 Latin Squares in Practice and in Theory I by Tony Phillips
August 2001 Fourier Analysis of Ocean Tides III by Tony Phillips
June 2001 Fourier Analysis of Ocean Tides II by Tony Phillips
May 2001 Fourier Analysis of Ocean Tides I by Tony Phillips
April 2001 A New Solution to the Three Body Problem – And More by Bill Casselman
March 2001 The Mathematical Study of Mollusk Shells by Tony Phillips
February 2001 Celestial Mechanics on a Graphing Calculator by Tony Phillips
January 2001


2000

Packing Pennies in the Plane by Bill Casselman
December 2000 The Mathematics of Communication by Tony Phillips
November 2000 Mathematical Card Tricks by Colm Mulcahy
October 2000 The Mathematics of Piano Tuning by Tony Phillips
September 2000 Navigational Mathematics by Tony Phillips
August 2000 The Catastrophe Machine by Tony Phillips
June 2000 Visual Explanations in Mathematics by Tony Phillips
March 2000 The ABC of DNA Computing by Tony Phillips
February 2000 The Method of Archimedes by Tony Phillips
January 2000


1999

The Mathematical CAT scan by Tony Phillips
December 1999 Metonymy and Metaphor in Mathematics by Tony Phillips
November 1999 The Differential Geometry of the Sphericon by Tony Phillips
October 1999 Descartes’ Lost Theorem by Tony Phillips
September 1999 The Most Irrational Number by Tony Phillips
August 1999 Multiple Mathematical Intelligences by Tony Phillips
June 1999 From Euclid and Euler to Public-key Codes by Tony Phillips
May 1999 Knots and their Polynomials by Tony Phillips
April 1999 Math and the Musical Offering by Tony Phillips
March 1999 Gravitational Lensing and Geometric Lensing by Tony Phillips
February 1999 A Prime Case of Chaos by Steve Weintraub
January 1999


1998

Calculating Pi using Elementary Calculus by Steve Weintraub
December 1998 Factorization–Unique and Otherwise by Steve Weintraub
November 1998 André Weil, May 6, 1906-August 6, 1998 by Steve Weintraub
October 1998 Prize Winners at the 1998 International Congress of Mathematicians by Steve Weintraub
September 1998 Polyhedra by Steve Weintraub
August 1998 Turing Machines by Steve Weintraub
July 1998 “The Trigonometry of Escher’s Woodcut “Circle Limit III” by Steve Weintraub
June 1998 Newton Basins by Steve Weintraub
May 1998 Quadric Surfaces by Steve Weintraub
April 1998 1998 Mathematics Awareness Week by Steve Weintraub
March 1998 Tiling the Poincaré Disk by Steve Weintraub
February 1998 The Mathematics Behind the Nobel Prize in Economics by Steve Weintraub
January 1998


1997

G. H. Hardy (1877-1947) by Steve Weintraub
December 1997 Fourier Approximation by Steve Weintraub
November 1997 J. J. Sylvester (1814-1897) by Steve Weintraub
October 1997 An Aperiodic Tiling by Steve Weintraub
September 1997 Pathfinder pictures from Mars by Steve Weintraub
August 1997 Mathematical Insights for Medical Imaging by Steve Weintraub
July 1997 You Can’t Always Hear the Shape of a Drum by Steve Weintraub
June 1997 A Wallpaper Pattern by Steve Weintraub
May 1997 Hyperbolic Space Tiled by Dodecahedra, 1 by Steve Weintraub
April 1997 Mathematics Awareness Week 1997 by Steve Weintraub
March 1997 The Unknotting Number of a Knot by Steve Weintraub
February 1997