Mathematics

The Scientific Way To Pick NCAA Basketball Winners

The Scientific Way To Pick NCAA Basketball Winners

Mar 15 2010 | 0 comment(s)

If you're trying to pick winners for this year's NCAA basketball tournament, ignore a team's seeding, which is statistically insignificant after the Sweet Sixteen, a new Journal of Gambling Business and Economics study reports.

The paper suggests that picking the higher-seeded team to beat a lower-seeded opponent usually works only in the first three rounds of the tournament. Once the tournament enters the Elite Eight round, a team's seed in the tournament is irrelevant.


Hyperseeing - Art, Mathematics and Architecture

Hyperseeing - Art, Mathematics and Architecture

Mar 14 2010 | 0 comment(s)

The International Society of the Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture (ISAMA) has published HYPERSEEING regularly since fall 2006. HYPERSEEING offers a lively mix of articles, news, reviews of books and exhibits, announcements, and even cartoons. One issue per year is typically the Proceedings of the ISAMA conference.


I was involved with ISAMA a few years ago and attended one of their conferences in Albany, NY. It is a mixture of art based on mathematics as well as a mathematical analysis of patterns and structures in art and architecture.


Pi Grows To Record Digits: But Is This Normal Behaviour?

Pi Grows To Record Digits: But Is This Normal Behaviour?

Mar 10 2010 | 0 comment(s)

On 31 December 2009, Fabrice Bellard announced that he had set a new world record for the most number of digits of the number pi. His algorithm has calculated the first 2.7 trillion digits of this famous mathematical constant, beating the previous record of 2.5 trillion digits set earlier in the year.


Professor Promotes Math Literacy With Annual Baseball Predictions

Professor Promotes Math Literacy With Annual Baseball Predictions

Mar 09 2010 | 0 comment(s)

 Spring training is just getting underway for Major League Baseball, and that means it's time for Bruce Bukiet, associate professor of Mathematics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, to make his annual predictions about the outcome of the season.

Bukiet bases his predictions on a mathematical model he developed in 2000. His model computes the probability of a team winning a game against another team with given hitters, bench, starting pitcher, relievers and home field advantage. For this season, he incorporated a more realistic runner advancement model into the algorithm. Operations Research published Bukiet's mathematical model several years ago.


Irrational Exuberance – Thank Goodness It's Pi Day!

Irrational Exuberance – Thank Goodness It's Pi Day!

Mar 08 2010 | 9 comment(s)

March 14th is Pi Day, and that's official! This tradition was started at the Exploratorium, in San Francisco, and 2010 will be their 22nd year of irrational exuberance. It also coincides with Einstein's date of birth – which was on 14 March 1879 – so it's a double celebration for geeks around the world.


A 0.01 P-value Just Doesn't Cut It

A 0.01 P-value Just Doesn't Cut It

Mar 03 2010 | 3 comment(s)

John Timmer comments on the problem of modern biomedical research and statistics: we can now measure so much more than our statistics can handle. In a typical genome-wide association study, you're testing so many hypotheses that the favored 0.05, 0.01, and 0.001 p-values from Stats 101 just don't cut it anymore.

"We're so good at medical studies that most of them are wrong:"


‘i’ have indeed been complex!

‘i’ have indeed been complex!

Feb 12 2010 | 2 comment(s)

I was off to a very important discussion on the next day. As usual, there were butterflies in my stomach wondering on how my story would be accepted by my critics, my dearest students. Ever since I knew me, I have always been cutting loose from the real me due to my ever ambitious propelling desire to dig deep and crack the code. I made sure to take a deep breath just after my much needed association with the nature!

 



Why is 1+1 equals 2?

Why is 1+1 equals 2?

Feb 09 2010 | 1 comment(s)

It was a usual practise for me to ask my young and energetic audience, my students, about what they thought about a particular topic before I share my thoughts. Once the fact is revealed, both sides of the stage remain in satisfaction equillibrium which, seemed to me, set up the required chemistry for a successful knowledge transfer.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />



Why is 1+1 equals 2?

Why is 1+1 equals 2?

Feb 09 2010 | 0 comment(s)

It was a usual practise for me to ask my young and energetic audience, my students, about what they thought about a particular topic before I share my thoughts. Once the fact is revealed, both sides of the stage remain in satisfaction equillibrium which, seemed to me, set up the required chemistry for a successful knowledge transfer.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />



Afraid of formulas

Afraid of formulas

Jan 27 2010 | 4 comment(s)

Finally, the exams of the first semester are over, and my teaching duty as well. I can finally spend some time on that paper I was supposed to publish six months ago, and start writing my thesis... and maybe blogging !

It's not that I don't like teaching, quite the opposite, but this year I must admit the level of my students was dramatically low. This year again, students didn't work their maths as they were supposed to do, which is quite annoying for that it is their best chance to succeed in physics.