A Catalogue Of Sustainable Achievements
Morning SuperForest
Do you ever wish your breakfast bagel exhibited more of the attributes of infinity?
Well, check out this tutorial by George Hart on how to craft yourself a mathematically stimulating Möbius bagel breakfast!
and here’s a video:
Love it,
Love
P
SuperForesters,
Because it’s Monday, and because this is the time a lot of you might be starting a fresh new academic school year, you’re probably wondering, “What’s the surefire way to get rid of these back to school blues?” Lucky for you, the answer is quite simple…
A whole lot of swag, that’s what.
Yeah, this video is a few years old. Yes, it’s a cover of an already dated song (I believe it’s from T.I.’s T.I. vs. TI-83 album?) But it still makes me smile. Plus it kinda goes perfect with what Patricia just posted.
The best of luck to those of you starting a new academic year. We’re sure this one will be full of nothing but fun and success.
Love,
SuperForest
Morning Dear SuperForest
Have you ever wondered what equations you would need to plot SuperForest on a graph? (what? no? really?!;). Well: wonder no more!
Xamuel.com’s inverse graphing calculator “is like a backwards graphing calculator. Normally, you enter an equation into your calculator and then get a graph of the curve. The way the IGC works is, you type something you’d like as your curve, like ‘Hello World’ or ‘I love you’. The IGC produces an *equation* which has this phrase as its graph!”
And for “SuperForest Yes” this is what you need:
Sweet!
P
Have you ever felt in Algebra class that you were sliding down a rabbit hole where things didn’t make sense any more? Maybe it’s because you were?!
Melanie Bayley, in New Scientist, argues that some of the most memorable scenes in Lewis Carroll’s (or Charles Dodgson, Oxford mathematician’s) opus ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ – from the cheshire cat, to the caterpillar, to the Mad Hatter’s tea party – were in fact a satirical analysis of the (then) newfangled ideas of algebra and abstract maths. The tea party and quaternions?
the parallels between Hamilton’s maths and the Hatter’s tea party – or perhaps it should read “t-party” – are uncanny. Alice is now at a table with three strange characters: the Hatter, the March Hare and the Dormouse. The character Time, who has fallen out with the Hatter, is absent, and out of pique he won’t let the Hatter move the clocks past six. Reading this scene with Hamilton’s maths in mind, the members of the Hatter’s tea party represent three terms of a quaternion, in which the all-important fourth term, time, is missing. Without Time, we are told, the characters are stuck at the tea table, constantly moving round to find clean cups and saucers.
…Alice’s ensuing attempt to solve the riddle pokes fun at another aspect of quaternions: their multiplication is non-commutative, meaning that x × y is not the same as y × x. Alice’s answers are equally non-commutative. When the Hare tells her to “say what she means”, she replies that she does, “at least I mean what I say – that’s the same thing”. “Not the same thing a bit!” says the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
Hmmm… Or maybe the answer is that Maths is the Wonderland where fantastic things are possible?!
Love
P
It would’ve made math so much easier. Courtesy of my friend Evan, by his friend Deepak. I love how words can spread.
jaell
Goooooooooooooooood Morning SuperForest!
Last week, SuperForester Julius and I were lucky enough to attend Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin’s incredible show here in New York.
After his set, Mr. Benjamin was kind enough to post up in the lobby and speak to people, sign autographs, and take photos.
Julius and I waited until the crowd had dispersed, and then we swooped in!
Our mission: To politely ask famous celebrity mathemagician Arthur Benjamin to record a hello video to the 4fives!
Which he did!
What an amazingly sweet and generous man. Not only did he say hello, he sung his special Pi song.
Arthur Benjamin is seriously on to something. He does only what he loves and he shares that love with the entire world, and the results are captivating. In the audience with Julius and I sat kids as young as 2 and as old as 92 (I’m assuming…) and everyone in the auditorium was spell-bound by his passion and skill.
Thank you so very much, Mr. Arthur Benjamin.
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
Everyone should check out Artie B’s amazing book: Secrets of Mental Math
-Jackson
This week a variety of colleges and other educational instances around New York organized the World Science Festival, right here in Manhattan, New York. We, from SuperForest, had press access and visited ‘The Mathemagician’ earlier today.
The mathemagician is a man named Arthur Benjamin who fearlessly merges the art of magic and the study of mathematics. Here is a video we made today while we were at the event.
The video has some poor quality from time to time, excuse me for that.
Let’s go on about this Arthur Benjamin. If you are a frequent SuperForest reader you may have read about him before. His TED talk is featured towards the end of this post. This video is really amazing and it also shows some of the things Benjamin showed us today. For example squaring a five digit number or telling on what day any random given date was.
I thought – and still think – that Benjamin is one of the most amazing mathematicians walking the Earth. He’s got a way of merging his profession and the other stuff he loves into one thing, and while he does that he is still teaching regular classes and conducting research. A true multi-tasker.
Since I have the aspiration to study an alike field of science I really appreciate how Benjamin tries to involve the ‘regular public’ with his field of research. Without a doubt I believe that he knows more about mathematics than most of us do, and only some of us are interested in becoming as good at it as Benjamin is. So it would be rather useless for Benjamin to start holding talks about the stuff he studies, since not a lot of people would be interested in listening to him.
Instead he sought for a tiny bit in his area of expertise that is interesting to everyone; performing mind bogglingly complex calculations from the top of his head. In his talk Bejamin showed that he looks for patterns, and that if you look carefully they are all around. And that’s what a part of mathematics is about.
So thank you Arthur Benjamin for trying to interest the general public in a complex field of science that would be put aside otherwise!
There are two reasons why the above image might confuse you. First, your mathematics teacher has probably always taught you that 1+1 does not equal 3 and second it is rather unclear whether the image is real or not.
Let me comfort you, in the mathematical world 1+1 equals 2 and the image is real. And this second fact forms the base for this Monday Modern Art Chat of the first of June.
This unmathematical artwork was created by the final year students of the Beckman’s College of Design in Sweden, and it’s purpose is to become an alternative meeting place. Currently it’s ‘exhibited’ at the Stockholm Design Fair. “Meeting place? How can some stacked objects fulfill the function of a meeting place?”, you might be thinking. The fact is, that the objects aren’t stacked together. The above picture is just the front view. This is a photograph taken from the side.
Quite amazing huh?
With this project the students wanted to give a new spin to the Furniture Fair. Since most of the objects exhibited and exposed are prototypes they can’t be utilized. 1+1=3 invites us, the audience, to come over and have a gander, to use the objects that are used in the installation. And that’s when it becomes a meeting place, just like the park, the baseball field or the public library. The students want to create an atmosphere where random strangers can run into each other, can meet each other.
That still doesn’t declare why there is an incorrect ’3′ in the artwork. I couldn’t find a statement by the artists but they probably want to tell us that an encounter between two people is more than two people on the same spot. It’s more than what it seems like at first sight and when you look closer you notice it’s way more.
A video and a lot of pictures are available through Yatzer. (The video shows the experience you have when walking around the structure).
(image via timeoutnewyork)
Hello Fellow SuperForesters,
My mom, the incredible SuperForester Sue, sent me a link to this mind-blowing TED talk. Margaret Wertheim and her twin sister are engaged in a project that uses math and crochet to create coral reefs out of yarn.
I wasn’t super duper enthused about either the math or the crocheting, but I watched it anyway, and I’m so glad I did. You will be too. This TED talk is a triumph. The idea-threads that Ms. Wertheim is able to weave together, so to speak, are incredibly illuminating, almost shocking. You’ve got to see for yourself…
Enjoy.
Hello All,
Okay, first watch this.
After seeing the way these children can quickly calculate massive sums solely by visualizing an abacus, one would think that with the necessary drive and enough practice anyone could learn this skill.
One wonders what other delightful mental tricks we’d be capable of, if we found the right way to visualize them.
If you liked the first video, you’ll flip over this one:
Awesome, no?
Here’s Arthur Benjamin’s website.
His book – “Secrets of Mental Math”
Ooooooh ooo! “Secrets of Mental Math” for the Kindle.
And here is the abacus wiki.
SuperForest is a positivity blog.
SuperForesters are all over planet Earth, all united in exploring how to redefine "environmentalism" and "sustainability" to encompass every aspect of our lives. Everything you find on this website has been personally created to uplift and inspire you.
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