Tuesday, July 23, 2013

More Math, Less Fighting #5

Alternate title: Peace to the Tenth and Beyond

An old one by masters of design:



A newer one with The Voice:




And here is one you can play with: The Scale of the Universe 2. (That's one not to be missed. Not. To. Be. Missed.)

In my experience, children also enjoy all of these.

23 comments:

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Say something positive for contrast

I came across the scale of the universe app a while ago and found it surprisingly informative, especially since it was put together by two kids.

exhelodrvr1 said...

No posts about Lime Ade, please.

Unknown said...

Neither I nor my kids can enjoy them on an IPad, apparently. :(

shiloh said...

Obama 51.1 ~ Romney 47.2

Mem'ries, may be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it's the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember...
The way we were...
The way we were...

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

Those are awesome.

Thank you.

Freeman Hunt said...

C Stanley, sorry. I feel your pain. I had to put down the iPad and go to the regular computer just to make this post!

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

More Math, Less Fighting

I can recommend this book.

Books that give a solid treatment of maths, as opposed to superficial treatments of trendy topics such as chaos theory or probability, seem to be remarkably hard to write. This book is old but it is one of the best layman's overview of maths that I have read.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Shiloh - Your guy didn't win by much. Sort of depressing, huh.

William said...

All that space and time and matter, and it's a good chance that we're the only living and rational creatures in all of it....There's a kind of paradox in that the more we contemplate the grandeur of the cosmos then the more we apprehend our own insignificance.......I suppose there's a good chance that we're nothing more than a chance by product of primeval slime and that our ability to process data is nothing but a clever trick, like the whale's ability to process krill. Humans used to take comfort in being the crown of creation, but even if we're just a transient collection of atoms without purpose or meaning, just the fact that we exist and can understand that we exist is an awesome miracle.

Methadras said...

C Stanley said...

Neither I nor my kids can enjoy them on an IPad, apparently. :(


Download Skyfire and it should work. The reason you are having issues seeing these videos is because flash based videos or apps don't work really well if at all on iOS. However, you can view these videos directly on your Youtube app if possible.

Methadras said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sydney said...

I was enjoying the Amazon sample of AReasonableMan's recommended math book until about page 13. Then my mind snapped shut.

It is very strange. My dad was a math teacher, but he would get very frustrated trying to teach me math. And to this day, when I see all of those equations with their constants and variables, I can not concentrate on them or coax any sort of meaning out of them. I have an easier time reading Greek.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

sydney said...
I have an easier time reading Greek.


I would like to be able to read Greek. I would have liked to have a classic OxBridge education from the time when philosophy still mattered.

Chip Ahoy said...

Dr. Fred had this book and I admired it but he would not hand it over, generous, he really was a retentive bastard when it came to books. Thin book. There was another thin exercise book that I liked too, and it would have been helpful, but he would not let loose. They're favorites, they're out of print, so no.

So I bought it on Abebooks for $1.00 and had it sitting there on the coffee table on his next visit. His double take is a treasured memory.

I resisted watching again but I did and got something new that changed me permanently. I never noticed before the the thin white line appear and zip across the inset screen "at the true speed of light" It was the first time I ever thought of a burst of light traveling across space and watching it like something alive.

yashu said...

AReasonableMan,

I recommend the 3 volume set "Reading Greek" (Grammar and Exercises, Texts and Vocabulary, Independent Study Guide) by Joint Association of Classical Teachers, published by Cambridge.

yashu said...

Or you might prefer (alternatively, or in addition) Greek: An Intensive Course. This is the texbook used in the first Greek course I took in college. But later, on my own, I used the JACT "Reading Greek" books, and they are the ones that got me to start reading Greek texts, real Greek texts, more fluently.

At least, well enough to very very slowly muddle through bilingual Loeb editions of Plato.

Trooper York said...

What is the matter with Lime Aid.

That was a great concert. Bob Geldorf did a great job getting all those musical acts together in one place.

It was awesome.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Yashu, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, at this point in my life I think that this will remain a day-dream, amongst several others.

roger said...

@ William:

"I suppose there's a good chance that we're nothing more than a chance by product of primeval slime and that our ability to process data is nothing but a clever trick, like the whale's ability to process krill."

No, William. Jesus loves you. It is possible that everyone else just hates you to the end of time, but not Jesus.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Thanks for that powers of ten video. I saw it a few months back and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Shows you how cutting-edge (and more interested in science) people were even in the 1970s.

deborah said...

William:
"All that space and time and matter, and it's a good chance that we're the only living and rational creatures in all of it..."

Having grown up reading SciFi, I'd always taken it as a given that statistically, there would be other worlds with intelligent beings. Have you seen anything that strongly questions that idea?

William said...

Sometime back I read an article by someone who knows about such things. He claimed that the unusual thing about our solar system was not that the earth was in the sweet spot that allowed life but that Jupiter, at the far perimeter of the solar system, served as a vacuum to pick up passing asteroids and comets. We still get clobbered occasionally but if it weren't for Jupiter it would happen with far greater frequency. He listed a number of other one off factors that allowed life to exist on earth.......I'm an English major and no one to pass judgment on such things, but that's what he wrote. If there are any other intelligent beings in the universe, they are certainly not a chatty bunch, but who knows. Maybe Roger has it right, and, as Tertullian teaches, he will get the pleasure of spending all eternity watching my damned soul writhe in agony in hell.

Freeman Hunt said...

The way I ask one son which of these videos he'd like to watch is, "Boxes or rings?"