Mathematics

The constant 1/137 may be variable after all. This immutable number determines how stars burn, how chemistry happens and even whether atoms exist at all. Physicist Richard Feynman, who knew a thing or two about it, called it “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding”. Now its mystery is deepening. Controversial hints suggest this number might not be the universal constant we had assumed, instead varying subtly over time and space. Michael Brooks, “There’s a glitch at the edge of the universe that could remake physics” at New Scientist 137 is a prime number and 1/137 is the fine-structure constant: The importance of the constant is that it measures Read More ›

Prime numbers are the “building blocks for larger numbers”: The Riemann hypothesis is a statement about a mathematical curiosity known as the Riemann zeta function. That function is closely entwined with prime numbers — whole numbers that are evenly divisible only by 1 and themselves. Prime numbers are mysterious: They are scattered in an inscrutable pattern across the number line, making it difficult to predict where each prime number will fall (SN Online: 4/2/08). But if the Riemann zeta function meets a certain condition, Riemann realized, it would reveal secrets of the prime numbers, such as how many primes exist below a given number. That required condition is the Riemann hypothesis. It conjectures that certain zeros of the function — Read More ›

One question is whether people are looking for logically certain answers any more: Whereas mathematics seeks precise and certain answers, obtaining them in real life is often intractable or outright impossible. In such circumstances, what we really want are algorithms that return reasonable approximations to the right answers in an efficient and reliable manner. Real-world models also tend to rely on assumptions that are inherently uncertain and imprecise, and our software needs to handle such uncertainty and imprecision in robust ways. Many of philosophy’s central objects of study – language, cognition, knowledge and inference – are soft in this sense. The structure of language is inherently amorphous. Concepts have fuzzy boundaries. Evidence for a scientific theory is rarely definitive but, Read More ›

We outlined the story of how a mortarboard mob hounded out of the journals a paper by a respected mathematician that had passed peer review for fear of “repercussions” (= the hell they themselves would go out and raise). The paper was about “greater variability in various traits among males than females of many species, including humans.” That is, more men than women win the Field’s Medal and more men than women sit on Death Row. That is something everyone everywhere has noticed but the social justice gestapo makes it difficult to discuss intelligently, as in this instance. Anyway, from The Scientist, we learn, For the scientific community, the double retraction has highlighted issues with the editorial process, and how Read More ›

From researchers at Princeton: The seemingly random digits known as prime numbers are not nearly as scattershot as previously thought. A new analysis by Princeton University researchers has uncovered patterns in primes that are similar to those found in the positions of atoms inside certain crystal-like materials. The researchers found a surprising similarity between the sequence of primes over long stretches of the number line and the pattern that results from shining X-rays on a material to reveal the inner arrangement of its atoms. The analysis could lead to predicting primes with high accuracy, said the researchers. The study was published Sept. 5 in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. “There is much more order in prime numbers than ever Read More ›

Should science pursue truth regardless of consequences? Or must we succumb to political correctness? Must selectivity of females always equal males? Consider:
Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole – by Theodore P. Hill
“In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom.” . . . Read More ›

Same ”Mathematx” prof, same bilge, more publicity, but no action: A U.S. professor who teaches future public school teachers will “argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge” in a keynote to the Mathematics Education and Society conference this coming January, says her talk description. “The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction,” the talk summary says. “What are appropriate responses to reverse such a relationship?” We can already guess University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Rochelle Gutierrez’s answer, from reviewing her published writings and comments. Her plans for “an insurgency by the people” to subvert public institutions and American self-rule through “ethnomathematics” will knock your eyebrows off your Read More ›

And that is your mistake. A look at how social justice warriors have penetrated the soft underbelly of engineering: Engineering education has been infiltrated by a “phalanx of social justice warriors” who are steadily corrupting the field, according to a Michigan State University professor. “They have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering, where phrases such as ‘diversity’ and ‘different perspectives’ and ‘racial gaps’ and ‘unfairness’ and ‘unequal outcomes’ make up the daily vocabulary,” asserts Mechanical Engineering professor Indrek Wichman in an essay published Wednesday by the James G. Martin Center. “They have sought out the soft underbelly of engineering…” “Instead of calculating engine horsepower or microchip power/size ratios or aerodynamic lift and drag, the engineering educationists focus on group Read More ›

It’s a good thing that we don’t need bridges and buildings to be stable: Professional engineers are expressing befuddlement over unsubstantiated scholarly accusations that the field’s licensure exam is biased against women. Women are 11.6% less likely to pass. The agency that administers the exam—the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)—also pushed back against the suggestion that the exam may be biased against women. NCEES Director of Exams Tim Miller told Campus Reform that it seems highly unlikely that the exam itself is biased against women, insofar as NCEES has been reviewing the test specifically for gender bias for nearly two decades. “Since the early 2000s, the exam items have been reviewed annually to make them gender-neutral Read More ›

Recently, we noted the peculiar state of affairs by which atheists, who appear to dominate Top Science, have disproportionately progressive views and yet seem oblivious to the current progressive war on science. Here are two more shots at math: Rochelle Gutiérrez Title: Mathematx: Towards a way of Being The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction. What are appropriate responses to reverse such a relationship? How do we do work now (inside and outside of schools) that will reverberate and touch the lives of future generations? Drawing upon Indigenous worldviews to reconceptualize what mathematics is and how it is practiced, I argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge Read More ›

 From Denyse O’Leary at MercatorNet: In June, I wrote a piece here at MercatorNet, “A shambolic atheist community faces some tough choices,” reflecting on the discontent of some members of that community. It attracted a good many comments and at least one riposte shortly afterward. The riposte garnered 114 comments too. Clearly, the piece struck a nerve. That said, fewer readers than I had expected took up the issue that seemed most significant to me: “‘Eiynah’ fears that the [atheist] movement is going ‘right wing.’” I don’t think the atheist movement is going right-wing so much as that some prominent atheists are re-evaluating their relationship with progressivism. It’s about time too. Considering how many atheists see science as a worthy Read More ›

A recent book, Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God , by Melissa Cain Travis might be of interest. According to one of the Amazon reviews, One of the areas in the book that is unique and very interesting is the discussion about mathematics. The author states that, “Several eminent thinkers have convincingly argued that we discover, rather than invent, the realities of mathematics.” She cites numerous references from several scientists supporting this thesis, including Max Planck, Sir Arthur Eddington, Eugene Wigner and Roger Penrose. For example, physicist Wigner (an agnostic) wrote, “The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious. There is no Read More ›

From Natalie Wolchover at Quanta: Complex numbers, suitably paired, form 4-D “quaternions,” discovered in 1843 by the Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton, who on the spot ecstatically chiseled the formula into Dublin’s Broome Bridge. John Graves, a lawyer friend of Hamilton’s, subsequently showed that pairs of quaternions make octonions: numbers that define coordinates in an abstract 8-D space. Matemaical approaches to physics were left behind during the pursuit of answers from collides but, as Wolchover writes, no particles beyond the Standard (Big Bang) model have been found.” One rearcher, Cohl Fury, has since produced a number of results connecting the octonions to the Standard Model that experts are calling intriguing, curious, elegant and novel. “She has taken significant steps toward Read More ›

William Basener writes to say, I posted a conference presentation I gave on my work with John Sanford on the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations, posted on YouTube here. The talk was the keynote address at the International Conference on Ecology, Ecosystems, and Conservation Biology, in Toronto Canada (a fairly small but fully secular conference). I was able to give a broadly understandable exposition of the theorems and what they mean to populations. I also included a discussion of what Fisher’s theorem has meant to Neo-Darwinism in the past, what I believe our new result means to the future of Neo-Darwinism. The main result is a formula showing the effect of mutations in combination with selection. Mutations provide Read More ›