Jon was born and raised in Minnesota, learned mathematics at Gustavus Adolphus College, in Budapest, and finally earned his PhD at the University of Oregon. After positions at the Universities of Toronto, Georgia, and Oklahoma, he's now on the faculty at Oregon State University. He thinks it a shame how badly math fares in the modern educational-industrial complex and occasionally tries to do something about it when not indulging his other interests. Email: [email protected]
by Jonathan Kujawa Human beings are tightly bound by the limits of our intuition and imagination. Even if we grasp an idea on an intellectual level, we often struggle to internalize it to the point where it becomes a native part of our thinking. Rather like the difference between being able to comfortably converse in…
by Jonathan Kujawa Last month at 3QD we discovered that Pascal's Triangle contains all sorts of surprises. Like most things in mathematics, there is no end to the things you can uncover if you keep digging and have a curious mind. If we revisit the Triangle with our eye open for curiosities we notice that…
by Jonathan Kujawa Everyone learns about Pascal's Triangle when they are young. But I, at least, didn't learn all the wonders contained in the Triangle. Indeed, we're still discovering new things! To construct the Triangle is easy enough: you start with 1's down the outside edges and each interior number is gotten by adding together…
by Jonathan Kujawa In The Imitation Game Benedict Cumberbatch plays the amazing, fascinating, and ultimately tragic Alan Turing. I haven't seen it yet, but the reviews are good and it is bound to be up for a bunch of awards. It certainly does a thorough job of covering the Oscar checklist: Historical setting? Public and…
by Jonathan Kujawa Several weeks ago Alexander Grothendieck passed away. It is hardly possible to overstate his influence on twentieth (and twenty-first!) century mathematics. With the help of others he rebuilt vast amounts of mathematics from the ground up. He had a vision that still seems futuristic many decades later [1]. I compare it to…
by Jon Kujawa On October twenty-first was Martin Gardner's 100th birthday. In celebration nearly one hundred Celebration of Mind (CoM) events are being held around the world. There are a few still yet to come: check their events listing to find one near you [1]. The CoM is an annual affair in which people celebrate…
by Jonathan Kujawa This spring I attended the annual meeting of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. While there I heard a fantastic talk by Dr. Holly Krieger about which I'd like to tell you. If you'd like to hear Dr. Krieger tell you herself, I highly recommend the Numberphile video she hosted. You can see…
by Jon Kujawa Emmanuel Candes of Stanford University was a plenary speaker at the recent International Congress of Mathematicians. By chance I saw Candes speak several years ago at an American Mathematical Society meeting. Truthfully, Candes work is miles away from my own and I might not have seen him speak if it weren't for…
by Jonathan Kujawa The big news in math this week was the opening of the quadrennial International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Seoul. A number of prestigious awards are given at the ICM. Most famously this includes the Fields medal and the Nevanlinna prize (aka the Fields medal for computer science). Up to four winners…
by Jonathan Kujawa Mathematicians have a soft spot in their hearts for mathematical trifles. These beguiling little puzzles are more amusing than important, and also often devilishly hard. These are the sorts of math problems professional mathematicians are embarrassed to admit they spend time thinking about (but would be the first to tell you if…
by Jonathan Kujawa On “How Not to be Wrong” by Jordan Ellenberg. I have to admit something. When I travel I cringe on the inside when the person sitting next to me asks what I do for a living. The arc of the conversation invariably follows one of a few paths. On the very rare…
by Jonathan Kujawa In September the New York Times reported on an interesting tidbit in the annual budget request by the National Security Agency (NSA). You can read the full NYT article here, but the relevant lines are highlighted in this image from the NYT's article: NSA's Budget Request (image by the NYT) The NSA…
by Jonathan Kujawa A few months ago I wrote about one of my favorite results in math: Ramsey's Theorem. It tells us that when we look at things at a large enough scale complete chaos is impossible. That is, if we look hard enough we inevitably find patterns. Call it the Conspiracy Theory Theorem. Ramsey's…
by Jonathan Kujawa Yakov Sinai On March 26th it was announced that Yakov Sinai, a mathematician at Princeton University and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, had won the 2014 Abel Prize. The Abel prize was established in 2001 by the government of Norway and was first given 2003. Unlike the more famous Fields Medal,…
by Jonathan Kujawa A few years ago I decided I should learn a few card tricks. Like tying a necktie, eating with chopsticks, or building a fire, it seemed like the sort of thing everyone should have in their skill-set. As a person with mediocre dexterity I need tricks which don't depend on slight-of-hand. Fortunately…
by Jonathan Kujawa A few weeks ago the Numberphile website posted a short video. The video discussed an “astounding” sum and got considerable press (the video has 1,523,719 views so far). It appeared on both Slate and 3QD. The sum? It's: 3QD included links to the firestorm the video created (I know, I know, I…
by Jonathan Kujawa There is a delightful episode of Radiolab entitled “Emergence''. In it they look at the remarkably complicated structures which can emerge from large groups of remarkably dumb individuals each doing their own thing. You see this in ant colonies, flocks of birds, human cities, capitalist marketplaces, and the human brain. Remarkably, we…