Cartoon from here The Gini Coefficient – Measuring Inequality The Gini coefficient is a value ranging from 0 to 1 which measures inequality. 0 represents perfect equality – i.e everyone in a population has exactly the same wealth. 1 represents complete inequality – i.e 1 person has all the wealth and everyone else has nothing. […]
Is Intergalactic space travel possible? The Andromeda Galaxy is around 2.5 million light years away – a distance so large that even with the speed of light at traveling as 300,000,000m/s it has taken 2.5 million years for that light to arrive. The question is, would it ever be possible for a journey to the […]
This is a nice example of using some maths to solve a puzzle from the mindyourdecisions youtube channel (screencaptures from the video). How to Avoid The Troll: A Puzzle In these situations it’s best to look at the extreme case first so you get some idea of the problem. If you are feeling particularly pessimistic […]
Zeno’s Paradox – Achilles and the Tortoise This is a very famous paradox from the Greek philosopher Zeno – who argued that a runner (Achilles) who constantly halved the distance between himself and a tortoise would never actually catch the tortoise. The video above explains the concept. There are two slightly different versions to this […]
Fourier Transform The Fourier Transform and the associated Fourier series is one of the most important mathematical tools in physics. Physicist Lord Kelvin remarked in 1867: “Fourier’s theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an indispensable instrument in the treatment of nearly […]
Non Euclidean Geometry – An Introduction It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to describe the development of non-Euclidean geometry in the 19th Century as one of the most profound mathematical achievements of the last 2000 years. Ever since Euclid (c. 330-275BC) included in his geometrical proofs an assumption (postulate) about parallel lines, mathematicians had been trying […]
