Has anyone run into the Cotangent or Secant or Cosecant functions since learning them in High School? Does anyone use them for anything? I do seem to remember a few mentions from calculus that fussed about secants, but why do we have special names for these things ( Read more... )

One of the more amusing bits of my pollworking yesterday to me started around 1pm, while I was on the phone talking with jusdisguy, I heard the woman next to me (the other regular clerk) say to the student "Hey, you want to try a fun puzzle?". I could see that the woman had drawn a 3x3 grid, and was working at filling in the numbers, which she hadn't ( Read more... )

Here's a li'l story from back when I was a tenured (10-yeared) grad student, illustrating the importance of a particular Good Student Survival Skill. [Excerpted from a comment I made else-LJ]Many years ago, in grad school, I took a grad-level math class for my minor -- the first grad-level math class I'd ever taken. It was "Applied Algebra"[*], ( Read more... )

Been meaning to post 'bout this:

The Fourth International Conference on Origami in Science, Mathematics, and Education (4OSME)
September 8-10, 2006
at the California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California, USA

This interdisciplinary conference brings together artists, scientists, technologists, and educators who explore the relationships ( Read more... )

I may have to stop watching NUMB3RS.

( spoilers here )

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OK, I got carried away in response to a comment on a post in hitchhiker's LJ, and decided to post it in my own LJ too.~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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Caught this one from mactavish -- it's EscherSketch! WHEEEEEEEeeeeeee!

P.S. Still very low energy. Slept today (Sunday) for 16 hours! Aieee! Going back to bed now....

I heard this cute factoid thirdhand, and unable to find it on the internet, I decided to see if I could replicate it for myself. Here is my work:

The formula for relating earthquake magnitude MS (on the Richter scale) to its energy yield in Joules is [ref]: ES = 1.74 × 105.24 + 1.44 MS

LOG10ES = 1.44 MS + 5.24

There is a large range of ( Read more... )