I read almost five years ago about the excitement surrounding the "discovery" of a prime number that was over six-million digits long, but now that has been topped with the unearthing of a prime that is made up of some 13-million digits. Prime numbers make up the "periodic table" of numbers, the building blocks that combine to form all numbers. A prime number is a whole number divisible ... Read full entry
13-million reasons to make one a prime number again
Posted by John Lampard on Monday, 22 September, 2008 to the comment subset
Bean counters don’t need no education
Posted by John Lampard on Wednesday, 10 September, 2008 to the comment subset
It looks like you are born to be accountant, or numbers person, and there's no avoiding your fate, I'm sorry. While it may be possible to acquire the skill of accurately estimating a quantity, say the number of slices in a loaf of bread, without actually counting them, a study of maths tests results show it is an ability most people are born with. Justin Halberda at Johns ... Read full entry
I like your numbers better than your letters
Posted by John Lampard on Thursday, 24 July, 2008 to the design and art subset
Type designer Erik Spiekermann in a recent interview talks about the challenge of designing numbers... as if letters would be much easier. "Anybody can design letters, but numbers are hard. Tech was an interesting challenge that I gave myself: to create a typeface that has no diagonals. When you design numbers, you have to do ABC at least. It's interesting because I realized that what worked for ... Read full entry
Fibonacci Numbers in Nature
Posted by John Lampard on Thursday, 8 May, 2008 to the comment subset
Fibonacci Numbers in Nature You can find examples of these Fibonacci numbers everywhere if only you look. This article points out instances of the sequence in flowers. Knowing the Fibonacci number of a certain flower may be useful for those who like doing the "he/she loves me, he/she loves me not" thing, so they know exactly where to start the recitation. Probably most of us have never taken the time to examine ... Read full entry
What’s that number again?
Posted by John Lampard on Friday, 5 December, 2003 to the comment subset
Apparently mathematicians the world over are celebrating the discovery of a new prime number. According to my mathematics directory, a prime number is divisible by itself and the number one.How many primes do you know?As for the newest member of the prime fraternity, it’s too long to bother writing out. It’s the largest such number yet found. I doubt (or is that hope) ... Read full entry
|
