27 NOV 2013 by ideonexus

 Arthur Benjamin Explains the Fibbonacci Set

Now these numbers can be appreciated in many different ways. From the standpoint of calculation, they're as easy to understand as one plus one, which is two. Then one plus two is three, two plus three is five, three plus five is eight, and so on. Indeed, the person we call Fibonacci was actually named Leonardo of Pisa, and these numbers appear in his book "Liber Abaci," which taught the Western world the methods of arithmetic that we use today. In terms of applications, Fibonacci numbers appe...
  1  notes

And provides new insights into its web of patterns and numerical relationships.

18 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 How Language Obfuscates

That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, 1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.
Folksonomies: mathematics language
Folksonomies: mathematics language
  1  notes

An example of how we name numbers taints our ability to solve or conceptualize certain problems.