Category:
Maths
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17th October 2011It’s a RiotThis is not a funny post. I moved back to St Andrews a month ago and I’ve enjoyed just about every minute since. I love it here. So far, my second year at St Andrews has been very different from my first. I’m now doing only maths modules; the maths is harder and there’s more of it. This semester I’m doing modules entirely in pure mathematics, which I think is great. Next semester will be more applied, but pure is where my heart is. I’m currently taking 3 modules: a 2nd year one called Algebra & Analysis, a 3rd year one about ...
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20th June 2010But… why?Go and read today's Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It's one of my favourites. So that seems to work - I tried it out with 6 and 8 and I got 48. That's right. When I got down to the section "see if you can figure it out before moving on", I thought about it, but I couldn't intuitively come up with a reason why it worked. So I did the only thing I knew: I proved it that it worked. Once I finished my proof I was satisfied that the trick did indeed work. I scrolled down with a naïve expectation to ...
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6th April 2010CompressionThe majority of strings can not be compressed. By string I just mean a binary number, which is ultimately what all computerised stuff is. How come? Well, say you wanted to compress a 4-bit string to a 3-bit string. There are 24 possible 4-bit strings, but only 23 possible 3-bit strings: there are twice as many possible 4-bit strings as 3-bit ones. Compression is a lossless process so that the compression can be reversed, so each uncompressed (4-bit) string should match up with a unique compressed (3-bit) string, in a one-to-one correspondance. Yet there are only half as many 3-bit possible strings ...
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12th March 2010Fear Teh WiBuLog!Alright I'm going to try and write in the daytime for once. Last time I wrote about WiBu I had some criticism about his blog and what I felt was his restrictive desire for perfection. Whether or not that was true, WiBu has since relaunched a much-improved IAmWiBu.com, as a series of 'WiBuLogs'. That's not to say that his deleted content ((I still have a copy of it. Once something's on the internet it stays there... forever. ;))) was bad, but, judging by the number of posts, his setup is now much more successful at getting his thoughts down (which is ...
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22nd February 2010Horizon – To Infinity and BeyondHmph. I don't particularly like Horizon at the moment. I don't know if it's because I already know a lot of what they're talking about, or if it's because they're just not very good. Maybe it's both - with my knowledge I can tell when they're just stirring shit up to add some drama, and I often feel that the producers are aiming more to entertain and shock than to inform. Several days ago I watched the episode called "To Infinity and Beyond ((It's currently available on BBC iPlayer.))". Unsurprisingly, it's about infinity, an interesting topic. It started off exploring the mathematical concept ...
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About Wilf's Blog
I'm a mathematician, but apart from that, I'm a fairly normal guy. I used to write a blog - this blog. I write (wrote) about whatever is on my mind. It can get quite personal sometimes.
