An almost convincing start for Wolfram A...
Wolfram Research finally launched Wolfram|Alpha, the much talked about “computational knowledge engine”. It’s unusual description is justified by the fact that we are not dealing with a search engine in the classic sense of the term, nor with the next Google.
At first glance we’re...
Happy National Pi Day!...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Math News on
03 14th, 2009 |
19 Comments
Many math lovers and geeks alike celebrate “Pi Day” on March 14. In fact, when using the American style for dates where the month precedes the day, today is 3/14. The most committed among us will even go so far as to keep an eye on their watch or set an alarm to go off at the Pi Minute,...
A New Kind of Search...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Applied Math, Math News, Math Websites, Software on
03 10th, 2009 |
4 Comments
Seven years ago Stephen Wolfram published A New Kind of Science. I remember the hype surrounding this book. Journalists jumped at the chance to praise a heavy tome that was too complex for most of them to fully understand, but that shipped with an ambitious title and the implicit guarantee that comes from a...
Review of Math for Moms and Dads...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Essential Math, Math Education, Suggested Reading on
03 6th, 2009 |
4 Comments
Last weekend I had a chance to read Math for Moms and Dads, which I received from Kaplan as a review copy. This book aims to providing a friendly guide for parents of children ages ten and up, who are struggling with mathematics.
Many parents face the challenge of helping their children with math homework,...
The nicest math book I own...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Suggested Reading on
12 22nd, 2008 |
24 Comments
I recently got a hold of what I consider to be the nicest mathematical book in my collection. As a matter of fact, it’s the nicest book I own, period – even though I posses bookshelves teaming with terrific titles on mathematics, science, programming, computer science, photography and so on. The...
13 Useful Math Cheat Sheets...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Applied Math, Math Education, Software, Tutorial on
09 20th, 2008 |
35 Comments
Cheat sheets can be very useful and make for great posters around your room. The following is a collection of 13 cheat sheets for several mathematical topics and programs:
General Math Cheat Sheet (iPaper and other formats)
Elementary Algebra Cheat Sheet (PDF)
Trigonometry Cheat Sheet (PDF)
Calculus Cheat...
Getting started with gnuplot...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Applied Math, Software, Suggested Reading, Tutorial on
06 8th, 2008 |
8 Comments
gnuplot is an excellent scientific package for visualizing data and plotting functions. Despite its name, it has nothing to do with the GNU project, even though it’s Open Source and entirely free. This tool is very handy whenever you need to produce production quality graphics from a given data-set (or...
That’s impossible!...
Imagine a rope that was just long enough to wrap tightly around the equator of a perfectly spherical earth. Now imagine that the length of that rope is increased by one meter and again wrapped around the earth, supported in a regular way, so as to form an annulus. Doing things in this way will form a certain...
On the Importance of Mathematics...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Math Education on
03 31st, 2008 |
20 Comments
Mathematics is the queen of science and the language of nature. Its importance should be clear to any reasonable person. It is easy however to diminish the value of certain areas of research because they’re currently thought as having little practical use. Evolutionary needs brought our mind to prefer...
An accessible Calculus book and Benjamin...
Posted by
Antonio Cangiano in
Suggested Reading on
03 21st, 2008 |
6 Comments
It has been a while since my last book recommendation. I’ll take the opportunity of the Easter longer weekend to write about two books that were recently released and I just finished reading. The first one is an atypical Calculus book, while the second one is a popular mathematics title which is...
