Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?

in Comedy, Math, Video - Science | February 28th, 2011

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.

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MIT’s Vintage 1970 Calculus Courses Now Online … And Still Handy

in Math, MIT | January 26th, 2011

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.

  • Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Sin­gle Vari­able Cal­cu­lus (1970) – YouTube — iTunes Video – Web Site
  • Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Mul­ti­vari­able Cal­cu­lus (1970) – YouTube – iTunes Video – Web
  • Cal­cu­lus Revis­it­ed: Com­plex Vari­ables, Dif­fer­en­tial Equa­tions, and Lin­ear Alge­bra (1972) — YouTube — iTunes Video — Web

The cours­es are also list­ed in the Math sec­tion of our Free Online Course col­lec­tion (where you’ll find many oth­er calc cours­es)…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Lec­tures from Cor­nell (1964)

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

MIT Intro­duces Com­plete Cours­es to Open­Course­Ware Project

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The Joy of Stats: Hans Rosling’s Rollercoaster Ride Through the Wonderful World of Statistics

in Math | January 3rd, 2011

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.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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200 Countries & 200 Years in 4 Minutes, Presented by Hans Rosling

in History, Math | December 3rd, 2010

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.

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The Big Cheat

in Business, Math, Random | November 23rd, 2010

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

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Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” Animated (Part II)

in Math, Music | August 6th, 2010

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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Journey to the Center of a Triangle

in Math | August 6th, 2010

In 1977, Bruce and Katharine Corn­well used a Tek­tron­ics 4051 Graph­ics Ter­mi­nal to cre­ate ani­mat­ed short films that demys­ti­fy geom­e­try. The films have now reemerged on the Inter­net Archive. Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle appears above. You can also watch Con­gru­ent Tri­an­gles, which fea­tures the mem­o­rable ‘Bach meets Third Stream Jazz’ musi­cal score. Enjoy.

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Arthur C. Clarke Presents the Colors of Infinity

in Math | August 3rd, 2010

In 1995, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the futur­ist and sci­ence fic­tion writer most well known for his nov­el 2001: A Space Odyssey, pre­sent­ed a tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary on the 1980 dis­cov­ery of the Man­del­brot Set (M‑Set). Frac­tals: The Col­ors of Infin­i­ty brings us inside the world of frac­tal geom­e­try, and soon enough we’re encoun­ter­ing what has been called “the thumbprint of God.” Clarke nar­rates the film, which has a 54 minute run­time. David Gilmour (gui­tarist, vocal­ist and song­writer for Pink Floyd) cre­at­ed the sound­track. Big hat tip to Greg for send­ing along…

Note: You can pur­chase online the DVD of the doc­u­men­tary, along with the orig­i­nal book on which it was based.

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