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Action needed to continue receiving Math in the Media Math in the Media has moved to a new platform! In order to continue receiving each month’s posts via email, you must visit the new website to confirm your subscription: Go to https://www.ams.org/mathmedia/ Under the heading “Subscribe to Math in the Media via email,” enter your…
This month’s topics: The exponential function in Slate New mathematical ideas from artificial intelligence Math history online The exponential function in Slate The online magazine Slate invited Gary Cornell to explain to all of us why the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was spreading so fast. (This was back on December 17, 2021). He contributed “The…
This month’s topics: Algebaic topology and the weather Topology in children’s visual perception Algebraic topology and the weather The Lorenz attractor is probably the most famous chaotic dynamical system. It is the trajectory of the solution to a nonlinear system of three differential equations, discovered by Edward Lorenz (1963) in his attempts to model weather;…
This month’s topics: The Prime Minister’s geometry problem Amazing mathematical sandpiles The Prime Minister’s geometry problem French Emperor Napoleon had a theorem, U.S. President Garfield had a proof and now Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has a geometry problem. The story was reported by Alex Bellos in his Monday puzzle column in The Guardian on September…
This month’s topics: 5D topology in photonic metamaterials Dynamics of topological defects on cell membranes Ingrid Daubechies in the N. Y. Times Magazine 5D topology in photonic metamaterials Magnetic monopoles (e.g. a positive pole with no negative) have been studied seriously as theoretical objects since 1931 when Paul Dirac proved their link to the quantization…
This month’s topics: Old Babylonian Applied Geometry Computer assists lofty theory Fractals and Synchronization Old Babylonian Applied Geometry The story was picked up by The Guardian, the Smithsonian’s SmartNews, Science News, Arab News and Popular Mechanics. Donna Lu’s coverage in The Guardian (August 4, 2021) has the headline “Australian mathematician discovers applied geometry engraved on…
This month’s topics: Quasi-crystalline tilings Fractal geometry of cities Quasi-crystalline tilings On April 6, 2021 the Museum of Nature & Science in Las Cruces, NM presented a Zoom lecture by Rima Ajlouni (School of Architecture, University of Utah) with the title “Quasi-crystalline Geometry in Islamic Art and Architecture.” (The lecture is now available on Facebook)….