Today:
- Announcements
- You have an assignment due.
- Does anyone have any "talk reports" to hand in?
- Talks and events coming up:
- Tomorrow, Thursday, October 16th: The Mathematics of Futurama! A van will be leaving from in front of MEP, at the bus-stop. Sign up at math@nku.edu.
- Postponed: a Pearson representative will be here to talk about textbook choice for calculus. Now Friday, October 24th.
- Any other opportunities that you've heard of?
- Next time: we'll have a visit from Dr. Jennifer Quammen, an alum who went on to graduate school, and eventually veterinary medicine.
- You do have a new assignment: Type up a well-written, one-page
proposal for your poster presentation. The focus should be on the
mathematics you want to investigate.
- Today we continue with the discussion of infinity -- the end of your infinite fall break. By the end of today, you should know that
- The irrational numbers are more numerous than the rational numbers, and that
- There are an infinite number of successively larger infinities...!
Some names and ideas:
- Pythagoras (circa 500 BC) -- discovery of the irrational
- Zeno (circa 450 BC) -- summing an infinite number of numbers
- Euclid (circa 300 BC) -- "potentially infinite" primes
- Georg
Cantor (1845-1918) -- "No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has
created." (David Hilbert)
- Some infinite practice:
- Motel Infinity
- That the irrationals are bigger than the rationals
Website maintained by Andy Long.
Comments appreciated.