Pale blue dot
Given the historic New Horizon’s mission to Pluto, I reflected back on Carl Sagan’s famous quote concerning an image of Earth as seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft 6 kilometers miles from home. Sagan greatly influenced the early direction of my career into mathematics and science. After reading this quote, no one can ever say that…
The golden ratio, Fibonacci numbers, and independent sets in graphs
Mathematics was once again in the news recently, when a high school student Joseph Rosenfield discovered an error in the expression for the golden ratio in the Museum of Science in Boston. This is the photo that Joseph took in the museum: The “error” was the negative sign in the expression of the golden ratio. In…
Caitlyn Jenner and the theory of elites in a social network
In a wonderfully affirming and brave move, Caitlyn Jenner affirmed her identity on the cover of Vanity Fair shot by Annie Lebowitz. A tweet of Jenner’s, along with the photo, sent shock waves through social media. Within four hours of her tweet on the topic, her twitter account garnered an incredible 1 million followers. To date, this…
R.I.P. John Nash
Like everyone else, I was devastated today to hear of the passing of the nobel prize winning mathematician John Nash. He and his wife died in car crash on Saturday, May 23. When I first heard the news I thought his passing was due to old age as I am sure many first thought. Reading…