Category Archives: Math

Mathematical Democracy: Mission Impossible? Maybe not…

In 1950, a 29-year-old PhD candidate at Columbia published a stunning theorem that later won him a Nobel Prize: “There is no such thing as a fair voting system.”  Or so the legend goes.  Let’s dive into this claim and … Continue reading

Posted in Math, Math in Pop Culture, Mathematics in Society, Social Justice, Uncategorized, Voting Theory | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

What is a Manifold? (3/6)

Intrinsic descriptions One immediate benefit of considering coordinate-free descriptions of geometric objects is that we may talk about “curves” that are not a priori embedded in . In other words, we don’t have to start with a subset of to … Continue reading

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What is a Manifold? (2/6)

We continue from Part One of this journey our attempt to illustrate how one can start with calculus and arrive at the definition of a 1-dimensional manifold. In the previous segment, we concluded with the fact that a curve in  may … Continue reading

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What is a manifold? Yet another article! (1/6)

Why (yet) another article? There are competing theories online about possible interpretations of John von Neumann’s quote, but manifolds are definitely some mathematics that “you don’t understand … you just get used to them,” — at least for a while. In a series of … Continue reading

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Riddle of the Month (September)

Hi, and welcome back from the summer to a new series of mathematical riddles! I’ve decided to include only one riddle per post this semester, which will hopefully mean that I’ll be able to keep a more consistent posting schedule. … Continue reading

Posted in Math, Math Games, puzzles | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments