Memorial Day – a few statistics: Memorial Day in the USA marks the beginning of summer. Barbeques and parties dominate the holiday. Americans will consume 818 hot dogs every second from Memorial Day to Labor Day (seven billion in total), and spend $1.5 billion on meat and seafood over the weekend. More than forty-two million […]
In this picture, taken in 1934, a rather nervous-looking Albert Einstein gives a lecture to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Pittsburgh. But, rumour has it that he failed in his early math exams. Scientists announced in 2016 that they had detected gravitational waves from the merging of two black holes in […]
How safe is the Boeing 737 MAX series? This emotive question requires us to do some mathematics. In its current implementation the 737 MAX is no safer than first generation jetliners flying in the late 1950s to early 1960s: types that included the Comet, Caravelle, BAC-111, Trident, VC-10, early 707, 720, DC-8 and Convair 880/890. […]
Amazing that having the right chalk can make a mathematician work better and feel happier. After all, when has Mathematics been about ‘feeling’? Actually, it is ALL about feeling – about feeling confident, about feeling like taking risk, about feeling good when solving problems and feeling great at a mathematical revelation while sitting at the […]
Waves in the Southern Ocean have already been recorded over 20 metres in height, but new research shows they’re getting higher. A small but significant increase of 1.5 metres per second – 8 per cent – was noted by researchers who analysed approximately 4 billion observations from 31 satellites and 80 ocean buoys worldwide. “Although increases of […]
Taking a person, when squatting, to be approx. a meter in diameter, we end up with the following ‘radical ratios’: 1. The size of a human cell to that person is the same ratio as a person’s size to Rhode Island 2. The size of a virus to a person is the same ratio as […]
