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From Computational Complexity

A ``new'' ``application'' of Ramsey Theory/A Truly ``bad'' math song

Ian Parberry once told me (though I doubt he originated it- The first link I found says it was Mark Twain) to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail...

From Computational Complexity

"How can you use your research for ugrad projects?'- the wrong question

I was helping a math PhD who worked in computable ramsey theory prepare his teaching and research statements for his job application. One of the questions various...

From Computational Complexity

Publishing: Why Are We Doing It Right and Other Sciences Aren't?

(NOTE- this is NOT a `we hate Elsevier and the others' post- though I suspect the comments will be about that.) Alexandra Elbakyan has created a repository ofhere...

From Computational Complexity

How many degrees are in a Martian Year?

James Tanton gave a great talk at the JMM (Joint Math Meeting) in San Diego on how many degrees are in a Martian Year? but he didn't quite answer his title question...

From Computational Complexity

Donald Knuth Turns 80 years and 6 days

Celebrating Donald Knuth's 80th birthday, or 80 years + 7 days birthday seems odd. Should we use powers of 2? Hmm- too few, just 32 and 64 really. And having ahere...

From Computational Complexity

A new largest prime found!

A new largest KNOWN prime has been discovered and its 23 million digits long. Nate Silver's website had an article about it (written by Oliver Roeder) here An...

From Computational Complexity

Which of these Math acronyms are well known?

The last time I taught Grad Ramsey Theory there were very good math grads and ugrads in it. They used some acronyms - some I knew, some I didn't know (but knowthis...

From Computational Complexity

Monkey First!

The following story is not true nor has anyone claimed its true, but it has a point: A company gets a contract to do the following: train a monkey to sit on a ...

From Computational Complexity

Interesting Probability on a VERY OLD TV show

I have posted about things I see in TV or Movies that are math or CS related: Do TV shows overestimate how much a genius can help solve crimes or make really good...

From Computational Complexity

Fireside chat with Simons Inst Director Dick Karp

Fireside chat with Dick Karp Above link is Samir Khuller interviewing Dick Karp, though its labelled as a fireside chat with Dick Karp. Very interesting...

From Computational Complexity

Van der Waerden's theorem implies the infinitude of the primes

(Sam Buss and Denis Hirschfeld helped me on this post.) I was reading the table of contents of the American Math Monthly and saw an article by Levent Alpoge entitled...

From Computational Complexity

Can you measure which panagrams are natural

A Pangram is a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet The classic is:                                        The quick brown fox jumped over thehere...

From Computational Complexity

The two fears about technology- one correct, one incorrect

When the luddites smashed loom machines their supporters (including Lord Byron, Ada Lovelaces father) made two arguments in favor of the luddites (I am sure IWeapons...

From Computational Complexity

The k=1 case is FUN, the k=2 case is fun, the k\ge 3 case is... you decide.

 (All of the math in this post is in here.) The following problem can be given as a FUN recreational problem to HS students or even younger: (I am sure that many...

From Computational Complexity

Open: PROVE the pumping and reductions can't prove every non-reg lang non-reg.

Whenever I post on regular langs, whatever aspect I am looking at, I get a comment telling me that we should stop proving the pumping lemma (and often ask me to...

From Computational Complexity

Reductions between formal languages

Let EQ = {w : number of a's = number of b's } Let EQO = { anbn : n ∈  N} (so its Equal and in Order) Typically we do the following: Prove EQO is not regular...

From Computational Complexity

Michael Cohen

When I first saw posts about Michael Cohen (see here, here, here) I wondered is that the same Michael Cohen who I knew as a HS student? It is.  I share one memory...

From Computational Complexity

Is the Textbook Market doomed?

STORY ONE: I always tell my class that its OKAY if they don't have the latest edition of the textbook, and if they can find it a  cheap, an earlier edition (often...

From Computational Complexity

Science fiction viewers used to embrace diversity (or did they) and now they don't (or do they)

(This post is inspired by the choice of a female to be the next Doctor on the TV show Dr. Who. Note that you can't say `the next Dr. Who will be female' since Dr...

From Computational Complexity

Acronyms and PHP

Whenever I teach discrete math and use FML to mean Formula the students laugh since its a common acroynm for  Fuck My Life. Now they laugh, and I say I know why...
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