Throwback Fact: Sangaku

Image: ca.wikipedia.org

Throughout much of the 1600s through the 1800s, Japan was largely isolated from the West. During this time, the Japanese samurai thrived, along with feudalism and the Buddhist religion. A tradition known as Sangaku (roughly translated: Japanese temple geometry) was born in this era. Japanese people from all social and educational classes would work to solve difficult geometry problems and inscribe the solutions on tablets, then hung the tablets on the roofs of Shinto and Buddhist temples as votive. Many of these problems are heavily focused on circles, an uncommon method in the West in the same time period.

Problem of the Week

Click to enlargen!

Happy Monday from the still-frozen tundra of New England. Like each Monday, I have shared the above problem to our Twitter, Google +, and Facebook pages. Today's problem, more logic than straight mathematics, was adapted from this puzzle site. I had actually encountered this problem once before, but I thought it merited a detailed explanation. 

My solution lies below...

Throwback Fact: Hypatia of Alexandria

image: commons.wikimedia.org

Of course we all know of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagorus… but what about female mathematicians in the ancient world? There weren’t many. In fact, the first woman mathematician about whom we have reasonably secure knowledge is Hypatia (circa 370 – 415 CE).

It is likely that the reason Hypatia became a skilled mathematician, philosopher, and astronomer is because she was exposed to science at an early age. Her father, Theon of Alexandria, was a distinguished professor of mathematics. Hypatia went on to teach mathematics at the same university as her father, and was always cited as a charismatic tutor by her students.

A depiction of Hypatia just before her death, by Charles William Mitchell
image: en.wikipedia.org

Hypatia is  unfortunately not remembered for any significant contributions to mathematics. Her works were all lost, though it is known that she created a commentary on Diophantus’s Arithmetica. The legends surrounding Hypatia stem from curiosity about her death. According to the limited sources available, Hypatia (a self-proclaimed pagan) drove a wedge between two political figures of Alexandria. She was blamed for increasing tensions and even riots between Christians and non-Christians as the church and state fought for power. Legends tell that Hypatia was brutally flayed and burned alive by Christian zealots in a church.

Hypatia’s legacy is so popular that it was adapted for screenplay in  the 2009 film Agora. While very little facts remain about her, it is important to remember Hypatia, the first woman in mathematics.

Sources:  
The Math Book by Clifford A. Pickover

The closing years of Greek mathematics by Jesse Osborn

Problem of the Week

Another Monday, another Problem of the Week. This problem was found on this website and while it's not mathematically complex, it involves a new layer of decoding that we haven't featured in a while. I thought it was particularly fitting because of the Alan Turing movie that is up for a few Oscars! So our problem of the week lies below:

Click to enlargen!

Once again, I've written up my solution to the problem. The image came out blue- I'm not quite sure why. Before you scroll down to see my answer, here's a hint: "Crispin" Bacon (or, you know, Francis Bacon) was particularly interested in cipher systems.

It's Ridiculous: The Price of Textbooks Today

Intro to Stats digital textbook- $9.95

I’m a college student. And I love learning- I really do. But students today have to jump through more hoops than ever before in order to complete their education. There are more competitive applications and admissions exams, more scholarship applications, more loans, more hidden costs, and, most importantly, there is more student debt. I did well in high school AP classes, I aced the SAT and ACT, and I applied early to colleges. While I’m extremely happy with where I ended up, there is one aspect of my two years at university (so far) that I would change in a heartbeat: the textbook bubble.

Students across the nation recognize that the rising price of academic textbooks is a problem. I’m very lucky- I have a great academic scholarship, so my parents are able to financially support me in the textbook department (thanks so much again, Mom and Dad!), but that doesn’t stop me from feeling sticker-shock and price-induced guilt.

“Wow, Mom, I’m so sorry,” I said over the phone while standing in the aisle of the university bookstore in the Fall of 2014. “My physics book is $280.” Of course I had to buy the book new- it came with a package for the online software we used for homework in the course. And that was just physics. I was also enrolled in a French class (a different book from my previous semester of French), an upper-level math course (two smaller books, think about the size of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for each), and an honors seminar on modern art (special ordered for the university bookstore book). My total price tag at the bookstore: $450.

And that’s just one semester of my story. College students around the country have different circumstances than mine: some struggle to pay the campus bookstore prices, some search online for discounts and end up buying sometimes outdated editions, and others -- a staggering 65 percent of students according to this article [9] --  are willing to forgo buying an assigned book altogether because of the price. If anything is more ridiculous than the prices students are forced to pay, it’s this: Students are going to great lengths to save money at the expense of a coherent learning experience. Professors choose a specific book to accompany their course because the material is relevant. If 65% of students who can’t afford full-price textbooks simply don’t buy the book, they’re missing out on all of the material not covered in lectures.

Math Minds: David Massey

David Massey, a full professor of mathematics at Northeastern University and the founder of the Worldwide Center of Mathematics, sat down with our math intern Tori for an interview this week. He is the first in hopefully a string of mathematicians who will be interviewed for this new blog series.

David B. Massey, Ph.D

Are you currently involved in any research?

Yes - I study abstract notions of space in any number of dimensions. I prove things about what those spaces look like at places where they’re not smooth [singularities].

How do you picture those?

You don’t really. You picture what happens in low dimensions and hope that it gives you intuition for the higher dimensions. You can’t picture the higher dimensions, so you prove theorems that describe them. I’m interested in singularities because they’re a great blend of topology, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry… a lot of stuff.