Show notes for the Math Mutation podcast.
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. With the end of 2023 approaching, I spent some time browsing the internet for interesting math news from this year,…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. You’ve probably read or heard at some point about the “replication crisis”, and the related epidemic of scientific…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. You may recall that in several earlier podcasts, 252 and 125, I discussed the famous math writer Douglas Hofstadter’s…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. Before I start, I’d like to thank listener ‘katenmkate’ for posting an updated review of Math Mutation on Apple…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. As I mentioned in the last episode, recently I read an unusual book, “A Fuller Explanation”, that attempts to explain…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. Recently I read an interesting book, “A Fuller Explanation”, that attempts to explain the mathematical philosophy and…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. I was surprised to read about the recent passing of Maurice Karnaugh, a pioneering mathematician and engineer from…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. If you have enough interest in math to listen to this podcast, I’m pretty sure you’ll recognize the name of Blaise…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. Do you remember the Rubik’s Cube, that 3x3x3 cube puzzle of multicolored squares, with each side able to rotate…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. Today we’re going to talk about a well-known paradox that a co-worker recently reminded me about, the Two Envelopes…
Audio Link With the arrival of summer weather in many parts of the U.S., it’s time to think again about various outdoor activities. Watching a few bicycles pass by my house the other day brought to mind a famous anecdote about pioneering mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. As you may recall, Turing was the famous British thinker who not only founded theoretical computer science, but…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. As I mentioned in the last episode, I’ve recently reread Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s classic book “The Black Swan” ,…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. The last episode’s discussion of randomness brought to mind the classic book “The Black Swan” by…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. Recently I was amused to hear about a strange machine called the “dice-o-matic”, a monstrous 7-foot tall machine that…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. If you heard the title of this podcast, you’re probably asking yourself, “What did he say?” Today we are discussing a…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. Mazes, or labyrinths, are probably the one type of somewhat mathematical game that nearly everyone is familiar with.…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our headquarters in the suburbs of Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. And now, on to the math. To celebrate this month’s Jewish holidays, I thought it might be fun to talk about the legendary Jewish comedian…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our new headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. Recently the infamous Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos has been in the news again, apparently filing new motions to delay her trial. As you may recall,…
Audio Link Welcome to Math Mutation, the podcast where we discuss fun, interesting, or weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school. Recording from our new headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, this is Erik Seligman, your host. Apologies for the long gap since the last episode— as you just heard, we have been relocating Math Mutation headquarters across the country. You can…
Audio Link The recent observation of Holocaust Remembrance Day reminded me of one of the stranger stories to come out of World War II. John Kerrich was a South African mathematician who made the ill-fated decision to visit some family members in Denmark in 1940 just before the Germans invaded, and soon found himself interned in a prison camp. We should point out that he was one of the luckier…
Audio Link At some point, you’ve probably heard an urban legend like this: someone walks into a Las Vegas casino with his life savings, converts it into chips, and bets it all on one spin of the roulette wheel. In the version where he wins, he walks out very wealthy. But, in the more likely scenario where he loses, he leaves totally ruined. This isn’t just an urban legend, by the way, but it has…
Audio Link If you’ve browsed the web sometime in the last three decades, especially if you visit any New Age or philosophy websites, you’ve probably come across the argument that quantum mechanics proves the existence of free will. Superficially, this seems somewhat plausible, in that quantum mechanics blows away our traditional idea that we can fully understand the future behavior of the universe…
Audio Link You may recall that in our last episode we discussed the results of 19th-century attempts to rigorously define the concept of whole numbers. These attempts culminated in the Peano axioms, a set of simple properties that defined numbers on the basis of the primitive concepts of zero and succession, plus a few related rules. While this definition has its merits, Bertrand Russell pointed…
Audio Link One of the amazing things about mathematics in general is the way we can continuously discover and prove new results on the basis of simple definitions and axioms. But in a way, this concept is similar to those ancient myths that our planet is sitting on the back of a giant turtle. It sits on another turtle, which sits on another, and it’s turtles all the way down. Where’s the bottom?…
Audio Link You may recall that in several past episodes I mentioned the odd pop philosopher Alfred Korzybski and his early 20th-century movement known as General Semantics. Korzybski believed that the imprecision and misuse of language was responsible for many of society’s ills. He came up with many supposedly practical ideas to fix this such as using “indexing” and “dating” to add numerical tags…