Category: Mathematics
Johnny Bartlett on why we should teach algebra
| October 7, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Education, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, science education |
At Classical Conversations: There has been a growing trend to say that Americans need less algebra education. In The Math Myth, Andrew Hacker argues that algebra and other upper-level high school mathematics like geometry and trigonometry are largely unnecessary for students and can even get in the way of students preparing for the life ahead […]
Are two infinities equal? Two mathematicians claim to have proven it
| September 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
From Kevin Hartnett at Quanta: Two mathematicians have proved that two different infinities are equal in size, settling a long-standing question. Their proof rests on a surprising link between the sizes of infinities and the complexity of mathematical theories. 66 … In a breakthrough that disproves decades of conventional wisdom, two mathematicians have shown that […]
Revolution: Indian manuscript from third to fourth century AD is first identified use of zero
| September 16, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
Which was a revolution. From Megan Gannon at LiveScience: The concept of zero as a number was revolutionary in mathematics. Historians have long known the idea came from India, but its exact origins remain murky. Now, the oldest Indian reference to the digit zero has been identified, in a manuscript dating back to the third […]
Math vs. Darwinian evolution
| August 3, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Informatics, Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
From Robert Marks II, author (with Dembski and Ewert) of Evolutionary Informatics at Evolution News & Views: On a new episode of ID the Future, CSC Director of Communications Rob Crowther talks with Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, about Marks’s new book, Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, which makes […]
Physicist David Snoke thinks that Christians should not use the kalaam argument for God’s existence
| July 30, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Philosophy, Religion |
The kalaam argument: The Cosmological Argument or First Cause Argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God which explains that everything has a cause, that there must have been a first cause, and that this first cause was itself uncaused. The Kalam Cosmological Argument is one of the variants of the argument which […]
At NPR: For social justice’s sake, get rid of algebra!
| July 21, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Education, Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
From Kayla Lattimore and Julie Depenbrock at NPR: Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads. It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you’re not a STEM major (science, technology, […]
Fun: Laws of math don’t apply in Australia?
| July 18, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
New Scientist’s Scare of the Month: From Timothy Revell at New Scientist: Mathematicians around the world are rushing to check millennia of calculations, as the Australian prime minister Malcom Turnbull has explained that their discoveries aren’t as concrete as we thought. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in […]
Is Mathematics a Natural Science? (Is that important?)
| July 11, 2017 | Posted by kairosfocus under Animal minds, Astronomy, brains and computation vs contemplation, Logic and First Principles of right reason, Mathematics |
In our time there is a tendency to treat Mathematics as though it is a natural science. This reflects in part the shift in meaning of the term Science in recent centuries, from knowledge and systematic bodies of more or less established knowledge, to the natural sciences based on inductive reasoning on observation and experiment. […]
What accounts for humans’ math ability?
| July 9, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Mind |
Various foolish explanations are on offer: the adaptationist hypothesis, the byproduct hypothesis, and the sexual selection hypothesis. From Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells at Evolution News & Views: Leaving aside whether mathematical ability really is a form of sexual display (most mathematicians would be surprised to learn as much), there is a fundamental problem with […]
Neuroscientist: Consciousness is theology, not neurology
| June 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Mathematics, Mind, Naturalism, Neuroscience |
From neurologist Robert J. Burton at Nautilus: As a fledgling neurologist, I’d already seen a wide variety of strange mental states arising out of physical diseases. But on this particular day, I couldn’t wrap my mind around a gene mutation generating an isolated feeling of being spied on by the FBI. How could a localized […]
Would math best communicate with ET?
| June 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Extraterrestrial life, Mathematics |
From Leonard David at LiveScience: The idea is that mathematics is as much a part of our humanity as music and art. And it is mathematics that might be understandable — even familiar — to extraterrestrial civilizations, allowing us to strike up star-speak repartee. Carl DeVito, an emeritus faculty in the mathematics department at the […]
Confusing Probability: The “Every-Sequence-Is-Equally-Improbable” Argument
| June 4, 2017 | Posted by Eric Anderson under Complex Specified Information, Design inference, Information, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Probability |
Note to Readers: The past few days on this thread there has been tremendous activity and much discussion about the concept of probability. I had intended to post this OP months ago, but found it still in my drafts folder yesterday mostly, but not quite fully, complete. In the interest of highlighting a couple of the issues […]
“Western” math as a dehumanizing tool?
| May 26, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Mathematics, News |
Well, we knew that math does NOT lead to a more interesting social life but… now get this from American Thinker: One thing you realize when following the follies and foibles of social justice warriors is that there is no limit to their idiocies – that anything and everything can be declared “racist” or “sexist” if […]
The unreasonable effectiveness of math vs evolution
| April 8, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
A friend draws attention to an old paper, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics vs. Evolution” (The American Mathematical Monthly Volume 87 Number 2 February 1980) by R. W. Hamming: If you recall that modern science is only about 400 years old, and that there have been from 3 to 5 generations per century, then there […]
Reader: Weirdness of infinity shows that the universe is not infinitely old
| March 27, 2017 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
In response to: Math prof: Be careful what we do with infinity. Weird things can happen: “Some weird things are like 1 = 0, not just weird, but undesirable. So we try to build our mathematical ideas to avoid those. But other weird things don’t contradict logic, they just contradict normal life,” a reader writes, […]
Math prof: Be careful what we do with infinity. Weird things can happen.
| March 26, 2017 | Posted by News under Mathematics, News |
From Eugenia Cheng at ScienceFriday: What has gone wrong? The problem is that we have manipulated equations as if infinity were an ordinary number, without knowing if it is or not. One of the first things we’re going to see in this book is what infinity isn’t, and it definitely isn’t an ordinary number. We […]
Absolute zero proven mathematically impossible?
| March 15, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
From Leah Crane at New Scientist: It’s an absolute. Mathematics has put speed limits on cooling, finally proving a century-old law – that unless you have infinite time and resources, you can’t get to the absolute zero of temperature. … Now Jonathan Oppenheim and Lluís Masanes at University College London have mathematically derived the unattainability […]
Is celeb number pi “normal”?
| March 15, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Mathematics |
Yesterday was pi day (3.14) From Tia Ghose at LiveScience: Pi is definitely weird, but is it normal? Though mathematicians have plumbed many of the mysteries of this irrational number, there are still some unanswered questions. Mathematicians still don’t know whether pi belongs in the club of so-called normal numbers — or numbers that […]
Blowing up mathematics
| February 27, 2017 | Posted by News under Mathematics, News, Philosophy |
From Jordana Cepelewicz at Nautilus, on mathematician Harvey Friedman: The foundations of mathematics is also a field—in stark contrast to the casual and light tone of Friedman’s emails—that has been in crisis for nearly a century. In 1931, the Austrian mathematician and philosopher Kurt Gödel proved that any logical system adequate to develop basic arithmetic […]
Deep problem created by Darwinian Ron Fisher’s p-values highlighted again
| February 18, 2017 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, News |
Maybe this time it will matter. From Frank Harrell at Statistical Thinking: In my opinion, null hypothesis testing and p-values have done significant harm to science. The purpose of this note is to catalog the many problems caused by p-values. As readers post new problems in their comments, more will be incorporated into the list, […]
