Breaking Math Podcast

A numerical base is a system of representing numbers using a sequence of symbols. However, like any mathematical concept, it can be extended and re-imagined in many different forms. A term used occasionally in mathematics is the term 'exotic', which just means 'different than usual in an odd or quirky way'. In this episode we are covering exotic bases. We will start with something very familiar (viz., decimal points) as a continuation of our previous episode, and then progress to the more odd, such as non-integer and complex bases. So how can the base systems we covered last time be extended to represent fractional numbers? How can fractional numbers be used as a base for integers? And what is pi plus e times i in base i + 1?

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[Featuring: Sofía Baca; Merryl Flaherty]

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Numbering was originally done with tally marks: the number of tally marks indicated the number of items being counted, and they were grouped together by fives. A little later, people wrote numbers down by chunking the number in a similar way into larger numbers: there were symbols for ten, ten times that, and so forth, for example, in ancient Egypt; and we are all familiar with the Is, Vs, Xs, Ls, Cs, and Ds, at least, of Roman numerals. However, over time, several peoples, including the Inuit, Indians, Sumerians, and Mayans, had figured out how to chunk numbers indefinitely, and make numbers to count seemingly uncountable quantities using the mind, and write them down in a few easily mastered motions. These are known as place-value systems, and the study of bases has its root in them: talking about bases helps us talk about what is happening when we use these magical symbols.

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Alex and Gabe discuss Alex's Science Fiction Trilogy.  Starting in a fictional Nazi Youth Science Academy, three young children go on to accomplish great things and become great friends only to discover that one of them has Jewish ancestry.   Can their friendship survive this tumultuous time in our worlds history?   The three go on to become great scientists contributing to the fates of the major powers of the 20th and 21st centuries.   

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Episode 2 from youtube.com/TuringRabbitHolesPodcast.   

Machines, during the lifetime of anyone who is listening to this, have advanced and revolutionized the way that we live our lives. Many listening to this, for example, have lived through the rise of smart phones, 3d printing, massive advancements in lithium ion batteries, the Internet, robotics, and some have even lived through the introduction of cable TV, color television, and computers as an appliance. All advances in machinery, however, since the beginning of time have one thing in common: they make what we want to do easier. One of the great tragedies of being imperfect entities, however, is that we make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes can lead to war, famine, blood feuds, miscalculation, the punishment of the innocent, and other terrible things. It has, thus, been the goal of many, for a very long time, to come up with a system for not making these mistakes in the first place: a thinking machine, which would help eliminate bias in situations. Such a fantastic machine is looking like it's becoming closer and closer to reality, especially with the advancements in artificial intelligence. But what are the origins of this fantasy? What attempts have people made over time to encapsulate reason? And what is ultimately possible with the automated manipulation of meaning? All of this and more on this episode of Breaking Math. Episode 48: Thinking Machines References: * https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/let-us-calculate-leibniz-llull-and-the-computational-imagination * https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/history+of+natural+language+processing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-source-data This episode is distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. For more information, visit CreativeCommons.org. [Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch]

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Join Gabriel and Sofía as they delve into some introductory calculus concepts.

[Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch]

Ways to support the show:

Patreon Become a monthly supporter at patreon.com/breakingmath

Time is something that everyone has an idea of, but is hard to describe. Roughly, the arrow of time is the same as the arrow of causality. However, what happens when that is not the case? It is so often the case in our experience that this possibility brings not only scientific and mathematic, but ontological difficulties. So what is retrocausality? What are closed timelike curves? And how does this all relate to entanglement?

This episode is distributed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. For more information, visit CreativeCommons.org.

[Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch]