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12 solutions for e2342s

admin — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:39:08 +0000

The spurge is broadcasting

admin — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 09:59:40 +0000

The impossibility of capturing the sea

admin — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:46:04 +0000

Anselm Kiefer has always held an unquestionable appeal. Reading today’s Guardian interview, I am told why. He is “almost theatrically” serious:

Putting a Euclidean diagram on a seascape is about the impossibility of capturing the sea. The sea is always fluid. The geometrical figure gives the impression of fixing it at a certain moment. It’s the same as us imposing constellations on the sky which, of course, are completely crazy and nothing to do with the stars. It is just for us to feel more comfortable. To construct an illusion for ourselves that we have brought order to chaos. We haven’t. I might have been born into a very literal state of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

Christmas books

admin — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:27:30 +0000

These set a good trajectory for 2011.

The iPeriscope

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:43:45 +0000

Required: 2 iPhones. 2 sticks and blue tack. A prodding device.

Operate by taking photo with upper device. Email to lower device. View.

Sum of integers

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 20:46:51 +0000

This is why the sum of n integers is 1/2n(n+1). Someone called Gauss worked it out in his head at school, but I like this picture.
If you make a rectangle n wide and n+1 high, and shade half of it across the diagonal, you can see that the light squares are the integers up to n (1, 2, 3…n).
The area of the rectangle is n*(n+1), and half of that is the row of integers.
This proof is mentioned in The Mathematical Universe (William Dunham)