Yesterday I attended the first-ever (as far as we know) joint meeting of the EPaDel (Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware) and New Jersey sections of the MAA. It was held at LaSalle University. I was very happy to see so many familiar faces and to make some new friends. I thought I’d share a few fun…
Author: Dave Richeson
Top ten transcendental numbers
Everyone loves a top ten list, and what’s better than a top ten list about numbers? (I’m reminded of David Letterman’s top ten numbers between one and ten from September 22, 1989.) So, on the heels of my previous posts about algebraic and transcendental numbers (here and here), here’s my list of the… Top Ten…
Trigonometric functions and rational multiples of pi
Recall that a real number is algebraic if it is the root of a polynomial with integer coefficients and that it is transcendental otherwise. For example is algebraic because it is a root of the polynomial , but is transcendental because it is not the root of any such equation. (On a recent blog post…
Pumpkin pi
My kids and I painted and carved pumpkins last night. And, yes, we made a pumpkin pi.
Circle squaring limerick
I found this nice limerick on Charles Petzold’s blog: Said the man about town, ‘I have a flair For squaring the circle, I swear.’ But he found that the strain Was too great for his brain, So he’s gone back to circling the square. Petzold has a scan of the title page of E. H….
Exceptional MathReviews
If you have access to MathSciNet and are in the mood for some good laughs, head over to Kimball Martin’s collection of Exceptional MathReviews. He introduces his collection as follows: Were you ever looking up papers in MathSciNet and you found one that especially made you smile or laugh? And were you ever wishing that MathReviews…
The hitchhiker’s guide to infinity
I’ve had a few encounters with large numbers and the infinite lately. First, I came across this interesting blog post that asks how many times you would have to fold a piece of paper so that its thickness would be the same as the distance from the earth to the moon. It is a really…
Musicians with PhD’s
Yesterday I saw this tweet on appear in my Twitter stream: @mergerecords NPR’s Science Friday talks to Dan Snaith about @caribouband and mathematics! http://www.sciencefriday.com/arts/2010/10/math-x-music-caribou/ It turns out that Dan Snaith, who is essentially the electronic band Caribou, has a PhD in mathematics. (According the math genealogy project he received a PhD in number theory in 2005, Kevin…
The transcendence of e (part 3)
This is the third part in a 3-part blog post in which we prove that is transcendental. Three-step proof that is transcendental Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Recall that in step 1 and step 2 we proved that for any prime sufficiently large and that is a nonzero integer. In this step we will…
The transcendence of e (part 2)
This is the second part in a 3-part blog post in which we prove that is transcendental. Three-step proof that is transcendental Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Recall that in step 1 we proved the following lemma. Lemma 1. Suppose is a root of the polynomial . Let be a polynomial and . Then…
David Richeson: Division by Zero 