Doodling — it’s usually a sign of boredom, an escape from tedium. Vi Hart turns it all upside down, and shows how doodling can be an engaging form of pedagogy. On her web site, you will find other math doodling videos called Stars, Snakes + Graphs, Binary Trees, Sick Number Games and Squiggle Inception. The video above is called Infinity Elephants. Thanks Kim for sending this our way.…
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Image by Richard Ressman, via Wikimedia Commons
Starting back in 1995, Keith Devlin, a Stanford math professor and popular science writer, began making appearance’s on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, where he demystifies math questions, both large and small, that have a bearing on our everyday lives. Years later “The Math Guy,” as he’s otherwise called, has built up a complete sound archive of his radio appearances, which features 78 episodes recorded between 1995 and 2001. Here are a few fine examples:
Again, you can access the complete archive here.
H/T @Stanford
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Yesterday’s lackluster Academy Awards ceremony may have afforded you some unexpected time for contemplating life’s more urgent questions, such as the one British comedian Alan Davies pursues above: How long is a piece of string? Watch Davies, who is also a frequent panelist on the popular Stephen Fry-hosted quiz show Quite Interesting, explore the riddle’s philosophical implications and inevitable connection to string theory with the help of physics, quantum mechanics, and finally a visit with mathematician Marcus de Sautoy. Fans of the Davies/du Sautoy interaction may also want to check out Du Sautoy’s TED talk on Symmetry, as well as the debates in that video’s comments section. More docs can be found in our collection of 200+ Free Documentaries, part of our larger collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.
Long ago, long before MIT hatched plans for its OpenCourseWare initiative and later edX, the university taped a lecture series covering the equivalent of a freshman-level calculus course. Released in 1970, the introductory class taught by Herbert Gross was suited for any student brushing up on his/her calculus, or learning the subject for the first time. MIT has now revived the lecture series, called “Calculus Revisited: Single Variable Calculus,” along with two more advanced courses. Although times have changed, calculus remains the same. And you’ll still find the series to be quite handy.
The courses are also listed in the Math section of our Free Online Course collection (where you’ll find many other calc courses)…
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Last month, we posted a dazzling clip – Hans Rosling tracing health trends within 200 countries over 200 years, using 120,000 data points, all in 4 minutes. Pretty quickly you saw why Rosling has earned a reputation for presenting data in extremely imaginative ways. The video was an outtake from a BBC documentary called “The Joy of Stats,” which is now fully available online. It runs 59 minutes and takes you on a “rollercoaster ride through the wonderful world of statistics.” When it’s all over, you’ll never doubt that stats can change how you understand our world.
The Joy of Stats will be added to our collection of Free Documentaries Online, a subset of our collection, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, Documentaries & More.
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Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, focuses on ‘dispelling common myths about the so-called developing world’ (as his TED bio well notes). And he has established a reputation for presenting data in extremely imaginative ways. Just watch the video above, an outtake from the BBC show “The Joy of Stats”). In four minutes, Rosling visually traces the health of 200 countries over 200 years, using 120,000 data points, and we end up with a little reason for optimism. Great stuff… Thanks to @Sheerly for flagging this.
There’s high drama in the classroom at the University of Central Florida. Richard Quinn, a longtime business instructor, gives 600 students their mid-term exam. Then comes the anonymous tip that cheating is rampant. Forensic analysis bears that out. Ultimatums are made. Moral lessons drawn. Soon the confessions – all 200 of them – follow. A rough day for all involved.
Postscript: We poked around a bit more and read the student newspaper at UCF. It’s possible that the cheating ring may be less devious than it first appears, but it’s still not entirely clear.
via Kottke.org
Michal Levy takes John Coltrane’s classic, “Giants Steps,” and interprets it through flash animation. We have posted a YouTube version above, but you should ideally watch this brilliant clip on Levy’s web site here.
This is not the first time that “Giant Steps” has been animated. Last year, we highlighted a popular video that makes Coltrane’s tune come alive on paper. You can watch it dance here.
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