Warren Buffet, considered by many to be the most successful investor of the 20th century, has called derivatives financial weapons of mass destruction (see link). As a matter of fact,…
You have just finished work and it's raining. This morning the sun was shining so you haven’t taken an umbrella with you and now you have to get to the…
At school we have spent a lot of time learning the equations of circumferences, ellipses, parables, and hyperboles, and many times, we asked ourselves: "When will I ever use these...…
Thanks to recent astronomical observations the topic of Dyson spheres is back in the limelight. What are they and what caused this renewed interest? Dyson Spheres Dyson spheres would be…
Warning! After you read this post, choosing vegetables at the supermarket will never be the same again! A few days ago while I was preparing dinner, I was peeling carrots…
Just 20 years ago, an event occurred that marked an important milestone in artificial intelligence. In May 1997, for the first time, a reigning world chess champion was beaten by…
As we said in the previous post, despite their many applications, all Monte Carlo methods fall roughly into three families: numerical integration, optimization, generation of probability distributions. Let's look at…
Can chance play a role in a mathematical calculation? At first glance, it seems the answer is no. We usually think that a mathematical algorithm is deterministic, so that if you…
In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter probe crashed into Mars due to a mismatch between the measurement units used in different parts of the trajectory control software. Subsequent investigations…
Wavelets are a powerful mathematical tool, used in recent years in many applications. For example, wavelets play a fundamental role in defining the JPEG-2000 and MPEG-4 standards. Let's see what…
Just 100 years ago Einstein introduced the so-called cosmological constant, the physical constant that perhaps has experienced the most changing fortunes. The Rise In 1915 Einstein published the field equations…
The story of the discovery of the solution formula for cubic equations is stunning. What happened gives us an interesting view of renaissance mathematics and shows us what it meant to be a mathematician in the 15th and 16th centuries. In those days,…
