Joseph Bennish, Prof. Emeritus of CSULB, describes the field of Diophantine approximation, which started in the 19th Century with questions about how well irrational numbers can be approximated by rationals. It took Cantor and Lebesgue to develop new ways to talk about the sizes of infinite sets to give the 20th century new ways to think about it. This led up to the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture and this year's Fields Medal for James Maynard.
Oct 26, 2022•22 min
Jeanne Lazzarini, a math education specialist, returns to discuss tessellations and tiling in the works of Escher, Penrose, ancient artists and nature. We go beyond the familiar square or hexagonal tilings of the bathroom floor. M.C. Escher was an artist who made tessellations with lizards or birds, as well as pictures of very strange stairways. Roger Penrose is a scientist who discovered two tiles that, remarkably, can cover an area without repeat, as well as a strange stairway.
Sep 28, 2022•21 min
Joseph Bennish returns to take us beyond the rational numbers we usually use to numbers that have been given names that indicate they're crazy or other-worldly. The Greeks were shocked to discover irrational numbers, violating their geometric view of the world. But later it was proved that any irrational number can be approximated remarkably well by a relatively simple fraction. The transcendental numbers were even more mysterious and were not even proved to exist until the 19th century.
Aug 24, 2022•22 min•Season 1Ep. 39
Jeanne Lazzarini, a math education specialist, shares the connections between math, such as fractals and the golden ratio, and art. These are everywhere--nature, architecture, film and more. She shares hands-on mathematical activities that helped her students see math as an exploration and an art.
Jul 25, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 38
Lara Alcock of Loughborough University shares what she learned, by tracking eye movements, about how mathematicians and students differ in the ways they read mathematics. She developed a 10-15 minute exploration training, that increases students' comprehension through self-explanation. We also discuss the transition between procedural math and proofs that many students struggle with early in their college careers.
Jun 22, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Jon Goga, of Brainy Spinach Math, is using the Roblox gaming platform to bring math learning to kids using something they already enjoy. Along the way, he teaches them some techniques that are useful for mathematicians at any level--breaking down and building up a problem. We also discuss the "inchworm" and "grasshopper" styles of learning.
May 25, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 36
Sunil Singh, the author of Chasing Rabbits and other books, shares fascinating stories that show mathematics as a universal place of exploration and comfort. Stories of mathematical struggle and discovery in the classroom help students connect deeply with the topic, feel the passion, and see math as multi-cultural and class-free.
Apr 22, 2022•16 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Yusra Idichchou explores the question: Does math imitate life or does life imitate math? We touch on Oscar Wilde, philosophy of both math and language, how formal abstractions can describe the subjective physical world and various philosophies of mathematics.
Mar 09, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Caron Rivera, a math teacher at a school for elite athletes, shares how she breaks through the myth of the "math person" and teaches athletes to think like mathematicians. Her problem solving technique applies to anything. Through it her students get comfortable with not knowing, with the adventure of seeking the answer. They build their brains in the process.
Feb 09, 2022•17 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Brian Katz of CSULB joins us once again to discuss mathematical definitions. Students often see them as cast in stone. Prof. Katz helps them see that they're artifacts of human choices. The student has the power to create mathematics through definitions. This is illustrated by the definitions of "sandwich" and "approaching a limit." What makes a good definition? How is mathematics like a dream?
Jan 12, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Mark Hendrickson, of Beast Academy Playground, talks about how to bring young kids into the joy, creativity and exploration that mathematicians experience. Kids enjoy art because they are free to try things and shun math for its apparent rigidness. He offers subtly mathematical games that invite even very young children to explore and question.
Dec 09, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Joshua Sack, mathematics professor at California State University, Long Beach, explores the breadth of art and mathematics and finds much commonality in patterns, emotions and more.
Nov 10, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Ian Stewart, prolific author of popular books about math, discusses how math is the best way to think about the natural world. Often math developed for its own sake is later found useful for seemingly unrelated real-world problems. A silly little puzzle about islands and bridges leads eventually to a theory used for epidemics, transportation and kidney transplants. A space-filling curve, of interest to mathematicians mainly for being counterintuitive, has applications to efficient package delive...
Oct 13, 2021•20 min
Joseph Bennish joins us once again to continue his discussion of symmetry, this time venturing into higher dimensions. We explore the complex symmetry groups of the Platonic solids and the sphere and their relationships. We then venture into the 4th dimension, where we see that, with a change to the distance the symmetries are maintaining, we get Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Sep 08, 2021•19 min
We are all born with an intuitive attraction to symmetry, through human faces and heartbeats. Joseph Bennish, of California State University Long Beach, explores the mathematical meaning of symmetry, what it means for one shape to be more symmetric than another, how symmetries form mathematical groups and groups form symmetries, and hints at implications for Fourier analysis, astronomy and relativity.
Aug 14, 2021•20 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Dana Clahane, Professor of Mathematics at Fullerton College, dispels some of the misconceptions about mathematics and discusses some famous unsolved problems that he has freshmen and sophomores working on, learning what math is really about.
Jul 14, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Will Murray, chair of the math department at California State University, Long Beach, discusses popular stereotypes of mathematicians and what they do when they do mathematics. Is it all lone geniuses generating big numbers? If so many people dislike mathematical thinking, why is Sudoku so popular?
Jun 16, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Joseph Bennish talks about prime numbers, a simple concept with surprising characteristics. Are they regular or random? This takes us into unexpected realms--calculus, complex numbers, Fourier transforms and "the music of the primes."
Jun 02, 2021•17 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Josh Hallam shares some of the ways he uses story writing and other creative endeavors in his math classes. He also discusses math in popular culture, including an original theorem in the animated show Futurama.
May 19, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Saleem Watson discusses the mysterious way math predicts the natural world. Much of math is invented, and yet there are many examples of cases in which purely abstract math, developed with no reference to the natural world, later is found to make accurate and useful models and predictions of the physical world.
May 05, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Joseph Bennish discusses two famous theorems, proved long ago, and some modern alternative proofs. Why would we bother reproving something that was confirmed thousands of years ago? The answers are insight, aesthetics, and opening up surprising new areas of investigation.
Apr 21, 2021•17 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Scott Crass, Professor of Mathematics at CSULB, expands our vague intuition about symmetry to look at transformations of various kinds and what they leave fixed. This approach finds applications in physics, biology, art and several branches of math.
Apr 07, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Saleem Watson, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, CSULB, confronts an ancient mathematical argument. Is math a body of eternal truths waiting for an explorer to uncover them, or an invention or work of art created by the human mind? Or some of each?
Mar 24, 2021•17 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Paul Eklof, Professor Emeritus UCI, discusses the famous impossible straightedge-and-compass constructions of antiquity that have fascinated mathematicians and attracted cranks for centuries. There are infinitely many possible constructions. How can you prove not one of them will work?
Mar 10, 2021•17 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Joseph Bennish, math professor at California State University, Long Beach, discusses how math is an exploration involving imagination and excitement. Kids get this. Adults can recapture this by generalizing and questioning. For example, a simple barnyard riddle leads to questions about optics.
Feb 24, 2021•17 min•Season 1Ep. 16
You are a contestant on Let's Make a Deal, hosted by Monty Hall. There are 3 identical doors. Behind only one is the prize car. You make your choice, then Monty Hall opens one of the other doors to reveal a goat and asks whether you want to change your choice. Should you, or does it matter? Paula Sloan talks about the counterintuitive answer, and how she got the Duke MBA students in her math class to believe the answer.
Feb 10, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Brian Katz, a professor at California State University, Long Beach, approaches math as a philosopher, a linguist and an artist. It is not a science, but a byproduct of consciousness, an expression of humanity and a way to make connections.
Jan 27, 2021•21 min•Season 1Ep. 15
We talk with Kathryn McCormick, Assistant Professor at California State University, Long Beach, about why she got into this obscure field, what a mathematician really does, and where we can learn more about being a mathematician.
Jan 13, 2021•16 min•Season 1Ep. 14
There are a lot of jokes that poke fun at mathematicians, how they think and how they fumble around in the real world. Many of them start, "A mathematician, an engineer and a physicist ..." We'll look at what these jokes say about us. The most telling is a little joke that only a mathematician would enjoy, since it gives surprising insight into how mathematicians think through all this abstraction.
Dec 30, 2020•16 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Fermat’s Last Theorem is easy to state but has taken over 300 years to prove. Fermat’s supposed “marvelous proof” has been a magnet for crackpots and obsessed mathematicians, leading through a treasure hunt across almost all branches of mathematics.
Dec 16, 2020•16 min•Season 1Ep. 12
