Little known fact: some sized Venn Diagrams have never been drawn. In case you missed it when it whipped round Twitter a few weeks ago: it looks like someone finally cracked the 11-Venn diagram, and it’s a cracker!
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Bill Thurston has died
William Thurston died yesterday of cancer, aged 65.
Thurston was one of the greatest contemporary mathematicians; a huge figure in low-dimensional topology. I won’t bother writing out a mathematical biography – Wikipedia and MacTutor have all the relevant information, as usual, and I won’t pretend I know a huge amount about the exact details of Thurston’s achievement. Instead, I’ve tried to gather together a few links from around the web that give an idea of why Prof Thurston was so widely admired.
Ask a mathematician: “Where should we live?”
Dear Mathematician,
My partner and I are trying to buy a house. We both work in different places, and neither of us enjoys commuting. How could we decide where to live?
Fictionally yours,
Norman Mettrick
Norman,
Thank you for your intriguing and entirely imaginary letter. The short and not terribly useful answer would be:
In what flipping dimension is a square peg in a round hole just as good as a round peg in a square hole?
In what flipping dimension is a square peg in a round hole just as good as a round peg in a square hole?
Let’s start at the beginning.
My Plus magazine puzzle from March asks “Which gives a tighter fit: a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole?” By “tighter” we mean that a higher proportion of the hole is occupied by the peg.
APPROXYMOTION by Peter A Vikar
[vimeo url=http://vimeo.com/40641882]
Peter’s site is full of beautifully stark geometric/topological art
Klein: outside the bottle
If you’ve heard of Felix Klein, it’s probably due to the Klein bottle, that strange four-dimensional object that is the subject of a new video here on The Aperiodical starring Katie Steckles and Matt Parker. Who is Klein and, apart from the bottle, what did he do?
Klein’s Times obituary records that he would point out “with a smile” that his date of birth comprised three squares of primes. So then, I will refer to his birth as taking place on the $( 5^2 )^{\textrm{th}}$ day of the $(2^2 )^{\textrm{th}}$ month in the year $43^2$ in Prussia. You might like to notice that today is the $( 5^2)^{\textrm{th}}$ day of the $( 2^2 )^{\textrm{th}}$ month as well, so it is the 163rd anniversary of Klein’s birth.
Money Polyhedra by Kristi Malakoff
Money Polyhedra by Kristi Malakoff:
