Transcripts of this episode are avialable upon request. Email us at BreakingMathPodcast@gmail.com. In this episode Gabriel Hesch interviews Taylor Sparks, a professor of material science and engineering, about his recent paper on the use of generative modeling a.i. for material disovery. The paper is published in the journal Digital Discovery and is titled 'Generative Adversarial Networks and Diffusion MOdels in Material Discovery. They discuss the purpose of the call, the process of generative ...
Jan 21, 2024•18 min
In October of 2023, Sofia Baca passed away unexpectedly from natural causes. Sofia was one of the founders and cohosts of the Breaking Math Podcast. In this episode, host Gabriel Hesch interviews Diane Baca, mother of Sofia Baca as we talk about her passions for creativity, mathematics, science, and discovering what it means to be human. Sofia lived an exceptional life with explosive creativity, a voracious passion for mathematics, physics, computer science, and creativity. Sofia also struggled ...
Jan 11, 2024•48 min
Join Sofía Baca and her guests, the host and co-host of the Nerd Forensics podcast, Millicent Oriana and Jacob Urban, as they explore what it means to be able to solve one problem in multiple ways. This episode is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For full text, visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ [Featuring: Sofía Baca; Millicent Oriana, Jacob Urban[ Help Support The Podcast by clicking on the links below: Try out ZenCastr ...
Jul 24, 2023•38 min
The history of mathematics, in many ways, begins with counting. Things that needed, initially, to be counted were, and often still are, just that; things. We can say we have twelve tomatoes, or five friends, or that eleven days have passed. As society got more complex, tools that had been used since time immemorial, such as string and scales, became essential tools for counting not only concrete things, like sheep and bison, but more abstract things, such as distance and weight based on agreed-u...
Jun 26, 2023•36 min
Help Support The Podcast by clicking on the links below: Try out ZenCastr w/ 30% Discount Use my special link to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan Patreon YouTube Breaking Math Website Email us for copies of the transcript! Join Sofia Baca and Nerd Forensics co-host Jacob Urban as they discuss all things counting! Counting is the first arithmetic concept we learn, and we typically learn to do so during early childhood. Counting is the basis of arithmetic. Before people coul...
Jun 08, 2023•47 min
As you listen to this episode, you'll be exerting mental effort, as well as maybe exerting effort doing other things. The energy allowing your neurons to continually charge and discharge, as well as exert mechanical energy in your muscles and chemical energy in places like your liver and kidneys, came from the food you ate. Specifically, it came from food you chewed, and then digested with acid and with the help of symbiotic bacteria. And even if that food you're eating is meat, you can trace it...
May 09, 2023•32 min
Christopher Roblesz is a math educator who, until the pandemic, worked as a teacher. It was his experiences during the pandemic, and his unwavering passion for preparing disadvantaged youth for STEM careers, that eventually led him to developing mathnmore, a company focused on providing an enriched educational experience for sstudents who are preparing for these careers.More on energy and entropy next time!All of this and more on this interview episode of Breaking Math! [Featuring: Sofia Baca; C...
Feb 28, 2023•55 min
Join Sofia Baca and her guests Millicent Oriana from Nerd Forensics and Arianna Lunarosa as they discuss energy. The sound that you're listening to, the device that you're listening on, and the cells in both the ear you're using to listen and the brain that understands these words have at least one thing in common: they represent the consumption or transference of energy. The same goes for your eyes if you're reading a transcript of this. The waves in the ears are pressure waves, while eyes rece...
Jan 15, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 1
An interview with Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder about her second book Existential Physics . Sabine is host of the famous youtube show Science with Sabine .
Oct 13, 2022•42 min
The world around us is a four-dimensional world; there are three spatial dimensions, and one temporal dimension. Many of these objects emit an almost unfathomable number of photons. As we developed as creatures on this planet, we gathered the ability to sense the world around us; and given the amount of information represented as photons, it is no surprise that we developed an organ for sensing photons. But because of the amount of photons that are involved, and our relatively limited computatio...
Jun 19, 2022•43 min
Physical objects are everywhere, and they're all made out of molecules, and atoms. However, the arrangement and refinement of these atoms can be the difference between a computer and sand, or between a tree and paper. For a species as reliant on tool use, the ability to conceieve of, design, create, and produce these materials is an ongoing concern. Since we've been around as humans, and even before, we have been material scientists in some regard, searching for new materials to make things out ...
May 28, 2022•56 min
Robert Black is an author who has written a six-book series about seven influential mathematicians, their lives, and their work. We interview him and his books, and take a peek into the lives of these influential mathematicians. Addendum: Hey Breaking Math fans, I just wanted to let y'all know that the second material science podcast is delayed. [Featuring: Sofía Baca; Robert Black]
May 15, 2022•51 min
Matter is that which takes up space, and has mass. It is what we interact with, and what we are. Imagining a world without matter is to imagine light particles drifting aimlessly in space. Gasses, liquids, solids, and plasmas are all states of matter. Material science studies all of these, and their combinations and intricacies, found in examining foams, gels, meshes, and other materials and metamaterials. Chris Cogswell is a material scientist, and host of The Mad Scientist Podcast, a podcast t...
Apr 12, 2022•56 min
Seldom do we think about self-reference, but it is a huge part of the world we live in. Every time that we say 'myself', for instance, we are engaging in self-reference. Long ago, the Liar Paradox and the Golden Ratio were among the first formal examples of self-reference. Freedom to refer to the self has given us fruitful results in mathematics and technology. Recursion, for example, is used in algorithms such as PageRank, which is one of the primary algorithms in Google's search engine. Elemen...
Mar 20, 2022•47 min
This episode description intentionally left blank! As in completely on purpose. Fun Fact! The creators of the Breaking Math Podcast, Sofia and Gabriel always thought it was funny that many books that we've read - even going back to our childhood - had a page in it with the sentence printed, "This Page Intentionally Left Blank." Like- okay; what does this 'intentionally left blank page' add to the reading experience? Does anyone know? Oh look here ! There is a wikipedia page on it. Huh. Now I kno...
Mar 19, 2022•46 min
Michael Brooks is a science writer who specializes in making difficult concepts easier to grasp. In his latest book, Brooks goes through several mathematical concepts and discusses their motivation, history, and discovery. So how do stories make it easier to learn? What are some of the challenges associated with conveying difficult concepts to the general public? And who, historically, has been a mathematician? All of this and more on this episode of Breaking Math. Songs were Breaking Math Intro...
Jan 23, 2022•1 hr 2 min
There are times in mathematics when we are generalizing the behavior of many different, but similar, entities. One such time that this happens is the use cases of Big O notation, which include describing the long-term behavior of functions, and talking about how accurate numerical calculations are. On this problem episode, we are going to discuss Big O notation and how to use it. This episode is licensed by Sofia Baca under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 4.0 Internationa...
Jan 04, 2022•23 min
The world is often uncertain, but it has only been in the last half millennium that we've found ways to interact mathematically with that concept. From its roots in death statistics, insurance, and gambling to modern Bayesian networks and machine learning, we've seen immense productivity in this field. Every way of looking at probability has something in common: the use of random variables. Random variables let us talk about events with uncertain outcomes in a concrete way. So what are random va...
Dec 23, 2021•34 min
Mathematics is a subject that has been used for great things over time: it has helped people grow food, design shelter, and in every part of life. It should be, then, no surprise that sometimes mathematics is used for evil; that is to say, there are times where mathematics is used to either implement or justify regressive things like greed, racism, classism, and even genocide. So when has math been used for destructive purposes? What makes us mis-apply mathematics? And why can oversimplification...
Dec 09, 2021•24 min
Join Sofía Baca with her guest Millicent Oriana from the newly launched Nerd Forensics podcast as they discuss some apparent paradoxes in probability and Russian roulette. Intro is "Breaking Math Theme" by Elliot Smith. Ads feature "Ding Dong" by Simon Panrucker [Featuring: Sofía Baca; Millicent Oriana] --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingmathpodcast/support...
Nov 30, 2021•30 min
Katharine Hayhoe was the lead author on the 2018 US Climate Assessment report, and has spent her time since then spreading the word about climate change. She was always faced with the difficult task of convincing people who had stakes in things that would be affected by acknowledging the information in her report. In her newest book, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World”, she discusses the challenges associated with these conversations, at both the micro...
Nov 21, 2021•1 hr 12 min
One tells a lie, the other the truth! Have fun with Sofía and Meryl as they investigate knight, knave, and spy problems! Intro is "Breaking Math Theme" by Elliot Smith. Music in the ads were Plug Me In by Steve Combs and "Ding Dong" by Simon Panrucker. You can access their work at freemusicarchive.org. [Featuring: Sofia Baca; Meryl Flaherty]
Nov 14, 2021•19 min
Welcome to another engaging episode of the Breaking Math Podcast! Today's episode, titled "What is the Use?," features a fascinating conversation with the renowned mathematician and author, Professor Ian Stewart. As Professor Stewart discusses his latest book "What's the Use? How Mathematics Shapes Everyday Life," we dive deep into the real-world applications of mathematics that often go unnoticed in our daily technologies, like smartphones, and their unpredictable implications in various fields...
Oct 24, 2021•44 min
The world is a big place with a lot of wonderful things in it. The world also happens to be spherical, which can make getting to those things a challenge if you don't have many landmarks. This is the case when people are navigating by sea. For this reason, map projections, which take a sphere and attempt to flatten it onto a sheet, were born. So what is a map projection? Why are there so many? And why is Gall-Peters the worst? All of this, and more, on this episode of Breaking Math. Theme was wr...
Sep 29, 2021•47 min
This is a rerun of one of our favorite episodes! We hope that you enjoy it if you haven't listened to it yet. We'll be back next week with new content! Thank you so much for listening to Breaking Math! Math is a gravely serious topic which has been traditionally been done by stodgy people behind closed doors, and it cannot ever be taken lightly. Those who have fun with mathematics mock science, medicine, and the foundation of engineering. That is why on today's podcast, we're going to have absol...
Sep 19, 2021•49 min
Voting systems are, in modern times, essential to the way that large-scale decisions are made. The concept of voicing an opinion to be, hopefully, considered fairly is as ancient and well-established as the human concept of society in general. But, as time goes on, the recent massive influx of voting systems in the last 150 years have shown us that there are as many ways to vote as there are flaws in the way that the vote is tallied. So what problems exist with voting? Are there any intrinsic we...
Sep 05, 2021•34 min
Forecasting is a constantly evolving science, and has been applied to complex systems; everything from the weather, to determining what customers might like to buy, and even what governments might rise and fall. John Fuisz is someone who works with this science, and has experience improving the accuracy of forecasting. So how can forecasting be analyzed? What type of events are predictable? And why might Russia think a Missouri senator's race hinges upon North Korea? All of this and more on this...
Aug 22, 2021•45 min
In mathematics, nature is a constant driving inspiration; mathematicians are part of nature, so this is natural. A huge part of nature is the idea of things like networks. These are represented by mathematical objects called 'graphs'. Graphs allow us to describe a huge variety of things, such as: the food chain, lineage, plumbing networks, electrical grids, and even friendships. So where did this concept come from? What tools can we use to analyze graphs? And how can you use graph theory to mini...
Apr 25, 2021•30 min
How many piano tuners are there in New York City? How much cheese is there in Delaware? And how can you find out? All of this and more on this problem-episode of Breaking Math. This episode distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. For more information, visit creativecommons.org Featuring theme song and outro by Elliot Smith of Albuquerque. [Featuring: Sofía Baca, Meryl Flaherty]
Apr 19, 2021•31 min
i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = -1. This deceptively simple formula, discovered by Irish mathematician William Rowan Hamilton in 1843, led to a revolution in the way 19th century mathematicians and scientists thought about vectors and rotation. This formula, which extends the complex numbers, allows us to talk about certain three-dimensional problems with more ease. So what are quaternions? Where are they still used? And what is inscribed on Broom Bridge? All of this and more on this episode of Breaking...
Apr 03, 2021•29 min
