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augusti 21, 2005
Ännu mer om Persi Diaconis
"Ännu mer" i titeln hänvisar till tidigare skrivningar om Persi Diaconis. För övrigt verkar det som om det nu har länkats till lite fler av Diaconis papers på Publications.
Artikeln Maths isn't just for textbooks:
The progress of mathematics abounds in tall tales and unlikely stories. And they don't come much more improbable than this. Outside, the July sun of the Aegean is hammering down on a coastal hotel in Mykonos. Inside, America's most charismatic statistician addresses a gathering that can boast several of the world's top mathematicians as well as a motley assortment of science writers, novelists, historians and theatre people. And what is he doing? He's performing a card trick....
How does he do it [i.e. the card trick]? Diaconis quips that "magicians aren't allowed to explain their secrets and mathematicians can't explain their secrets". But he tries. The root of card-recognition tricks lies in the De Bruijn Sequences, a branch of what's called "combinatorics" - a discipline with a long history that stretches from the counting patterns used in Indian classical music to the coded instructions for robots used today. The mathematicians grasp the theory easily enough, but the mind-boggling mental speed of the practice still confounds them, and me.
Artikeln skriver sedan mer om hur det (roligt nog) blivit mer populärt med populärmatematik.
För övrigt 2: Di däringa De Bruijn-sekvenserna som nämns i citatet ovan kan man leka med här (som Java Applet).
(Nej, tyvärr har jag missat vartenda avsnitt av Numb3ers som nu tydligen går på svensk TV.)
Posted by hakank at augusti 21, 2005 11:18 FM Posted to Matematik