August 2014 - mathfun@mailman.xmission.com

[math-fun] Jordan, prizes
by Warren D Smith 29 Aug '14

29 Aug '14

Another interesting thing about Pascual Jordan was, it was he who invented "Fermi Dirac statistics" but his paper on this was stuck in the bottom of one of [editor] Max Born's suitcases for a year or two, hence he did not get any "I'm the first" credit. Another large miscredit was the "Schrodinger equation" actually was first invented by Cornelius Lanczos. Who also invented the FFT. Lanczos was good at not getting famous. Born was very apologetic when he realized what he'd thus done to Jordan's fame... Of what use are prizes? Well, surely less use if the prize awarders make bad decisions! But anyhow, I think it is related to sports. Turns science into a spectator sport, with prizes, like winning a tennis tournament. This amuses all, and connects with Darwinian desires for fame related to mating attractiveness. It also helps focus the attention of beginners on important work. A big downside is, bad prize decisions can cause a lot of damage to an area.

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Re: [math-fun] Spherohedron???
by Henry Baker 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

Thanks! My 3D versions are a subset of "generalized Waterman polyhedra". Here's something from OEIS: http://oeis.org/A119870 However, there seem to be small discrepancies: this sequence talks about sqrt(2N) instead of sqrt(N). The polyhedra that I'm interested in are convex hulls of the lattice points at distance exactly sqrt(N) from the origin. I'd like to know the name of this particular subset (if it has a name). At 12:48 PM 8/28/2014, Allan Wechsler wrote: >In three dimensions, these are something like the Waterman polyhedra. Try >googling for that. > >On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 3:01 PM, Henry Baker <hbaker1(a)pipeline.com> wrote: > >> 2D: consider the polygon whose vertices are lattice points that have >> distance exactly sqrt(N) from the origin, where N is an integer. (They >> don't exist for all N.) >> >> ditto for 3D, 4D, etc. (In 4D, these should exist for every N.) >> >> ... >> >> Do these things have a name?? >> --- >> I was thinking about a problem where you take a large sphere about the >> origin & shrink it down & watch the lattice points on its surface move >> about.

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[math-fun] Spherohedron???
by Henry Baker 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

2D: consider the polygon whose vertices are lattice points that have distance exactly sqrt(N) from the origin, where N is an integer. (They don't exist for all N.) ditto for 3D, 4D, etc. (In 4D, these should exist for every N.) ... Do these things have a name?? --- I was thinking about a problem where you take a large sphere about the origin & shrink it down & watch the lattice points on its surface move about.

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Re: [math-fun] Microwave math
by Henry Baker 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

I would imagine that you won't get a total order; perhaps there are cycles? At 11:58 AM 8/28/2014, James Propp wrote: >My microwave oven timer thinks 90 is greater than 100. (The former is a >minute and a half; the latter is a minute.) > >Does anyone know of any fun number puzzles involving microwave math? (If >not, can anyone invent one?) > >Jim Propp

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[math-fun] Dragon "Curve" Successive Fourier approximations
by Bill Gosper 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

Download gosper.org/FDrags128.mp4 . Then nth Fourier coefficient is a bit hairy--infinite product of nontriangular 3x3 matrices. --rwg (I probably should have exported a .gif.)

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[math-fun] Microwave math
by James Propp 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

My microwave oven timer thinks 90 is greater than 100. (The former is a minute and a half; the latter is a minute.) Does anyone know of any fun number puzzles involving microwave math? (If not, can anyone invent one?) Jim Propp

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Re: [math-fun] Nobel bogosity
by Bill Gosper 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

On Thursday, August 28, 2014, Marc LeBrun <mlb(a)well.com> wrote: Discussing what's considered prizeworthy, the politics, the dramas just distracts from the truth that the whole concept of such prizes is bogus. Pray tell, what problem does awarding them solve? Tom Knight> How else are respected scientists supposed to obtain reserved parking spaces on campus? < I knew a certain Dr. van Dalsem who got a spot just for being Chief of Radiology. But it was meager compared to the one reserved for Dr. Van Accessible. --rwg I think both the ozone hole CFC and IPCC Prizes were at best premature, and may someday shame the Committee for being trendy and political.

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[math-fun] Nobel bogosity
by Warren D Smith 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

Actually, Phil Anderson (also a physics Nobelist) thinks that Einstein's photoelectric effect WAS more important than his discovery of relativity, i.e. the Nobel Prize guys got that one right!! Anyhow, my feeling is, in chemistry & physics the Nobel prize did have some screw ups, but they weren't nearly as embarrassing as the Medicine, Peace & Economics prize screwups. I mean, sure, maybe the guy who won it for inventing a gas regulator was not so important, and relativity was omitted, but at least that gas regulator really did work and was of technical importance! (And Raman's student K.S.Krishnan was credited by Raman in his Nobel lecture; even if the prize went only to Raman, Krishnan claimed Raman's description in his Nobel lecture of what happened, was correct & Raman was not trying to steal the credit.) But in the case of medicine, Economics, and arguably peace, the Nobel prize mistakes have in some cases enshrined complete con-men and frauds, and other times totally false "discoveries", and in some cases have caused a great deal of harm. And indeed I think having an Economics Nobel at all is a bad joke, economics is no science, is a highly corrupt and inbred largely-pseudo science. You pretty much cannot get an economics Nobel unless you come from a handful of schools. (Apparently Murray Gell-mann was outraged hearing some physicist describe his experience getting a Nobel and yelled "WHAT! You mean they let the economists onto the SAME PODIUM with you!?!" Wonder whether that story true :) Milton Wainwright is a British scientist/historian who investigated the Waksman-Schatz affair and publicized, long after, the true story. Waksman systematically tried to deny Schatz credit, including telling numerous lies (which Wainwright documented, e.g. telling the thrilling story of how he'd discovered this and that, getting the sample thusly, etc etc while in fact he was not even at Rutgers at the time, the sample was given to Schatz not Waksman, etc etc) and blackballed him resulting in a pretty ruined career for Schatz compared to what probably should have happened. Schatz then spent a large part of his life complaining and suing, which just made him unpopular, plus it pretty much did not succeed at all. Waksman then indeed got the Nobel, and had conned Schatz into signing over his royalties to a charity, the Rutgers Foundation, with Waksman doing the same -- but unbeknownst to Schatz, Waksman had a secret deal with the Foundation that 20% of the royalties would be returned to him, while Schatz got zero! So then Waksman got rich and powerful, while Schatz got various shitty jobs for the rest of his professional life and mostly was unable to do further research in those jobs. All this would have stayed that way, except for the intercession of Wainwright who went back & read the original documents such as lab notebooks and Schatz's thesis, then documented lie after lie told by Waksman in a book and various articles he wrote. Waksman's scientific productivity seems to have been in large part due to him stealing credit from lots of other people, actually; it was not just from Schatz.

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[math-fun] Einstein, Heisenberg
by Warren D Smith 28 Aug '14

28 Aug '14

My theory was simply: the Nobel committee was afraid relativity was not true, it was too radical, so they gave Einstein the prize for photoelectric effect. And it is very rare they ever award two Nobels to same person in the same area, so that wasn't on. They did give Bardeen 2 physics Nobels (albeit both of them shared). I don't understand the claim re Heisenberg vs Born & Jordan, Jordan being a Nazi. I mean, Heisenberg went along quite a lot with the Nazis, leading their atomic bomb program, and anyhow he won the Nobel in 1932, before Nazism got especially powerful and also Jordan only got particularly nazified many years after that. No? I personally never liked what I saw of the work of either Heisenberg or Bohr, they both seemed too confused too philosophical, and too endarkening, but admit I've stayed away from their work to a large extent for exactly that reason. But should we not argue that the original wacky ideas of Heisenberg actually were his, as opposed to Jordan who followed them up?

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[math-fun] Schatz's own account re Streptomycin
by Warren D Smith 27 Aug '14

27 Aug '14

If anybody cares you can read one of them here: http://www.albertschatzphd.com/?cat=articles&subcat=streptomycin&itemnum=001 Albert Schatz: The True Story of the Discovery of Streptomycin: Actinomycetes: Vol. IV, No. 2: 27-39: August 1993

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