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This is a blog where a professor from Northeastern University's Math department posts mathematical comments on the television show "Numb3rs". To comment, write to bridger@neu.edu.
Unique visitors since 6/14/2005:
December 22, 2006
Tonight's repeat episode "Blackout" features some pretty basic and elementary "new math." Check out the diagrams I had fun making when I blogged it last month: Set Theory.
Whatever holiday you do or don't celebrate, have a good one!
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December 21, 2006
The following Wikipedia entry will give you a good idea of what the (technical) mathematics behind text-recognition looks like: Principal Components Analysis . This was discussed non-technically in the previous blog.
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December 16, 2006
In Friday's show Charlie analyzes some online chat in an attempt to match an unknown posting with previous ones. This is an example of Statistical Textual Analysis (STA), a technique that originated in attempts to determine if novels or plays of dubious authorship were, in fact, the works of famous writers. A classical case is the question of whether Shakespeare's works were actually written by Marlowe (they weren't).
STA is a highly math-based technology, and there are many variations... continued »
December 15, 2006
About a year ago I wrote a blog about the Mandelbrot Set (12/30/05) . In that blog I mentioned that the Mandelbrot set is a fractal, in that it has similar features no matter how much you zoom in on it. The classic example of this "self-similarity" is given by Mandelbrot himself in his book The Fractal Geometry of Nature: a natural coastline... continued »
December 4, 2006
Last Friday's show, "Provenance", was a repeat. Here is the blog --- on detecting art forgeries --- that goes with it:
(There is no part II --- never got around to it.)
Finals are coming up, so the blogs may be a bit thin for a week or so... continued »