Intellectual Betterment

[User]

 

[fossyant]

Nope... Don't dis yourself. Common Sense is in really short supply.

I've spent the whole day engaging with a Professor, and I had to resort to really basic instructions - he still did not get it. Like - go and talk to your boss first. ?

Let the boffins do their stuff, but some of us pick up behind them.

 

[XmisterIS]

I didn't see the Code, but from what I could gather it was yet another program dedicated to pointing out all the patterns that exist in nature. Such as every flower in the world has a number of petals that fits into the fibbonacci series, the ratio of the height of a pyramid to its width is the same for all pyramids the world over, fractals are generated with recursive sets of imaginary numbers, space is four-dimensional, your light switch only works because of quantum tunneling, etc, etc!

 

[RedRider]

[QUOTE 1482551"]
So, by way of furthering my knowledge of the world, and general education, I have just watched 'The Code' on BBC2, it was introduced by some Professor or other who quite obviously has a brain the size of a small European Country (possibly even a medium sized one).

Well, it may have been the way he lost me on the discussion of Circadian Beetles and prime number life-cycles, or it may have been the part about imaginary numbers

Either way, I now feel a complete half-wit, especially so as my 11 year old son, who has a cold and wanted to stay up, picked up the way the conversation was going in the neo-lithic stone circle ("pi, obviously Dad") way before I did.

I need to stick to what I am good at I think, though after tonight I'm not sure what that may be anymore

Did anyone else see it?
[/quote]

He sounds bright!

The bit about imaginary numbers and how without them we wouldn't be able to track aeroplanes using radar in real time was fascinating. The whole programme was engaging. BBC at its best etc, makes me want learn more.

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I have yet to see it, but I'm usually ok with programmes like that and my Dad isn't - he has to either leave the room or go to sleep half way through because he can't make head nor tail of it

Now, I'm not exactly the brain of Britain as you probably have guessed by now, but I don't understand how I can 'get' these things and my Dad, an electrical engineer can't


I'm going back to College next month to get better qualifications (Highers in Chemistry etc) to go on and do things that I want to in the future

 

[marinyork]

Now, I'm not exactly the brain of Britain as you probably have guessed by now, but I don't understand how I can 'get' these things and my Dad, an electrical engineer can't

Maths is not an exclusive subject, it is if anything the most open subject there is in existence. You do not need any fancy equipment (historical relics, paint, laboratories etc), you can do it on your own with pen and paper (or chalk and blackboard). You can scribble in the sand. You can do it in your mind. Euler went blind and still did it! I get deeply irritated when other people who should frankly know better waffle on about qualifications and give out the impression it is a deeply exclusive subject meant only for a few freakish people or that they can make loads of money out of it. Maths simply isn't about that at all. It really, really isn't. Hopefully with a few indulgences in this programme by Marcus it'll get people exploring ideas they wouldn't go anywhere near.

As for Engineers, obviously as a discipline it uses Maths, but it is subtly different. Beyond A-level Maths the two subjects diverge. Maths deals with all kinds of things engineering just doesn't get the time to. It may surprise you to know that quite a few engineers think some ideas in Maths are a load of crap and tricks of the mind that are too clever by half, it is just that it is too useful to give up . Maths is like the engineer's mad Uncle who has been locked in the attic that nobody wants to see and has a lot of the engineer's answers. They go and visit only when they have to.

There are actually plenty of ideas in maths that people who think they are thick can understand. Maths isn't about just numbers as is commonly thought. It is just people's perceptions. The media and other people don't get beyond these perceptions because you have to study higher up to get rid of that or do it yourself (and as I've said few people do that as it is incorrectly viewed as an exclusive subject). It'd be a bit like saying that all history is the Norman Conquest or the Tudors or WW2 as that's the only thing you did at school. I don't think anyone would have difficulty seeing the absurdity of this idea, but with Maths people really do pretty much think along those lines.

 

[marinyork]

[QUOTE 1482551"]
So, by way of furthering my knowledge of the world, and general education, I have just watched 'The Code' on BBC2, it was introduced by some Professor or other who quite obviously has a brain the size of a small European Country (possibly even a medium sized one).

Well, it may have been the way he lost me on the discussion of Circadian Beetles and prime number life-cycles, or it may have been the part about imaginary numbers

Either way, I now feel a complete half-wit, especially so as my 11 year old son, who has a cold and wanted to stay up, picked up the way the conversation was going in the neo-lithic stone circle ("pi, obviously Dad") way before I did.

I need to stick to what I am good at I think, though after tonight I'm not sure what that may be anymore

Did anyone else see it?
[/quote]

The idea about the programme was a bit of fun. I'm glad you watched it. You're not really expected to understand things first time in a rushed programme, it's meant to introduce people to the ideas.

It might make you feel better to know that dealing properly with imaginary numbers is on the A-level Maths syllabus (although that reflects several other factors rather than their difficulty).

As Marcus said you can have one fish, what do you get when you have minus one fish? If you have a negative quantity of money, that makes sense, it means you owe it to someone else? Right?

Here's imaginary numbers. A positive number times a positive number is positive. A negative number times a negative number is positive. Think along the line of magnets - two positives repel, two negatives repel. Writing this down with 1 we get:-

1x1 =1
-1x-1 = 1
What happens if we get AxA = -1?
There isn't one? Right? If I have two sets of two eggs I get four. 2x2 =4. If I have one set of one egg I get one. How can I have some set of of something and get minus itself? We call this number i. i x i = -1. You can think of this in many ways such as 1 --> -1 being a rotation of 180 degrees in a plane and 1 --> i is 90 degrees. Rotate i another 90 degrees and you get -1.

Anyway give it another go. Stick with it .

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

I get deeply irritated when other people who should frankly know better waffle on about qualifications and give out the impression it is a deeply exclusive subject meant only for a few freakish people or that they can make loads of money out of it. Maths simply isn't about that at all. It really, really isn't. Hopefully with a few indulgences in this programme by Marcus it'll get people exploring ideas they wouldn't go anywhere near.

I hadn't meant it in the sense that because he has qualifications he should *know*, rather in the sense that he's (probably) more intelligent than I am (although sometimes often I do have to wonder ) and he does have to know quite a bit for what he does.

Anything to with Science in general will soon go over his head, not just programmes about maths, whereas I love it, even if I am just a layman.

There are actually plenty of ideas in maths that people who think they are thick can understand.

I know that and I'll always try. I really like things to do with Physics, the Universe, et al, but I can't do the maths to save myself, gowd I've tried, really, I have! .
I have a good grasp of the ideas behind it all though.

I actually wonder if I have slightly the numerical version of Dyslexia, I have been crap at maths since the year dot, but I keep on trying my hardest regardless of that (One of the Subjects I'm trying to improve on at College is Maths, so I'm still banging my head against the brick wall! - I'm ok with numbers and all.... until I actually have to do any large calculations. Then it goes awry rather quickly without me even realising ).

Maths isn't about just numbers as is commonly thought.

It is also about patterns and so on, I know.
When I do maths (badly) I tend to break it all down into chunks and work on the respective bits as it were before 'sticking' it all back together again at the end to get the answer.

Not quite the same, but you do end up using the same rules for things over and over again.

It'd be a bit like saying that all history is the Norman Conquest or the Tudors or WW2 as that's the only thing you did at school. I don't think anyone would have difficulty seeing the absurdity of this idea, but with Maths people really do pretty much think along those lines.

It isn't just maths as you no doubt will know, for example, open any Tabloid and you soon discover that anyone who is interested in anything (except for Football oddly enough) is a 'fanatic', some sort of freak or seen as being stupid, and that what they are interested in is all they do and think about 24/7

Being into railways, I've been there, done that, got the T - shirt, flag and amusing novelty hat.

 

[upsidedown]

I thought it was well written and presented, even if I didn't understand it all. For a good insight into what makes mathematicians tick I recommend reading Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh.

 

[asterix]

My elder brother is highly intelligent (IQ in the 150's) and never passed maths 'O' level after several attempts. Some people just don't work in the way that maths requires. After all maths as taught is simply a code for explaining things. It is quite possible that a different code could be used that people such as my brother would find more comfortable.

The human brain is not a single functioning organ, it consists of components that do different things. Individuals are likely to have brains that differ from other individuals in the level of performance at which each component operates.

Anyway, that is my theory, it is mine, and it belongs to me, and I own it, and what it is, too.

 

[BearPear]

I managed to pass O level maths and that was the end of any grasp my brain has on the topic! However, I too watched that programme and found that I already knew most of what he was going on about - and in more detail than he gave us.

That first piece about the ciccadas (sp?) was incomplete - there are many more curious facts about that situation. The part about cathedrals was also lacking, very "bitty". I think I must have read one of Mr BP's books and taken in more about these kinds of facts than I had realised!

It was a good basis for a programme, but he should have covered less but given us more information - for instance I don't recall any mention of Fibonacci when telling us about the Nautilus, and I would have liked to hear more about that. He gave us facts and details but no explanations - the Nautilus grows at a fixed rate, but why? Prime numbers - why are they so? Pi - why/how does it always work?

Having said all that, I will probably tune in next week!

 

[Arch]

Here's imaginary numbers. A positive number times a positive number is positive. A negative number times a negative number is positive. Think along the line of magnets - two positives repel, two negatives repel. Writing this down with 1 we get:-

1x1 =1
-1x-1 = 1
What happens if we get AxA = -1?
There isn't one? Right? If I have two sets of two eggs I get four. 2x2 =4. If I have one set of one egg I get one. How can I have some set of of something and get minus itself? We call this number i. i x i = -1. You can think of this in many ways such as 1 --> -1 being a rotation of 180 degrees in a plane and 1 --> i is 90 degrees. Rotate i another 90 degrees and you get -1.

Anyway give it another go. Stick with it .

Well, ok, but all you've done there is the equivalent of say what the chap said last night, only slower and louder. If someone has trouble grasping the concept of an imaginary number, that won't help.

Personally, I don't 'understand' the idea of imaginary numbers, but I'm content that some people do, and know how to use them.

I found the programme interesting, but a bit basic in places. I too, know about Pi. Once he'd mentioned it, I remembered that I knew about the 1.08 ratio in the nautilus. I'd heard of the cicadas (on a David Attenborough programme), but hadn't twigged about the thing of primes not coinciding often, although once I'd heard it, it made perfect sense - I'd just never had reason to think about it.

I did get a bit irritated by the way he went on about The Code, and how, miraculously, it fits the universe. To me, it's 'well, durrrrrr', because of course The Code (ie numbers) fits the universe, they are all part of the same thing, it just fits, no mystery - numbers are just our tool for explaining everything. It's like saying "hey, my skin is just big enough to contain me!" or "wow, this screwdriver drives screws!"

BTW, I've been watching de Sautoy's thing on the History of Maths, on BBC4 and it's pretty much the same info, only without the rather laboured Code theme. I guess some people just won't be interested unless there's a gimmick.

 

[Dan B]

Positive numbers are easy to visualise in reality, in that you can say "this is what three potatoes looks like" or "this is what seven and a half turnips looks like".

With negative numbers you can't do that trick, but once you've come up with the idea of pretending there are quantities smaller than "nothing at all" and giving values (-1, -2 etc) to them, they turn out to be really useful for representing quantities owed to someone else, for example. I think the usual presentation in school is of a "number line": a ruler which goes from 0 to infinity rightwards and is then extended to negative infinity leftwards. So people by and large grasp that concept fairly readily.

Imaginary numbers are even more challenging in that we don't really have everyday uses for them at all, so there's little incentive to get your head around them. But once you've come up with the idea of pretending there's another number line at right angles to the real one, so that "3i" is the same size as "3" but in another direction - just like "-3" is the same size as "3" but in another direction again - they turn out to be really useful for a bunch of slightly less everyday but still extremely important tasks like representing motion in circles. Which is great news if you want to build bridges that don't start bouncing up and down uncontrollably in high winds.

 

[dan_bo]

Here's imaginary numbers.

Just glazed over.

 

[Arch]

Just glazed over.

I think too many people place too much reliance on fully understanding, which stresses them, and makes them glaze over (not necessarily you). Like I said, I only vaguely 'get it', but I'm happy with that. If I really wanted to know, I'd learn.

Ever since we started inventing or uncovering the meaning of things, there will have been a vast proportion of the population who don't care (and don't need to know!) how things work, just that they do. Maths is one of those things. We can't all know everything.

That said, it's good to learn, but I hate to think of people assuming they are stupid because they don't get something like imaginary numbers - or anyone claiming they are clever just because they do - as Fossyant said, there are some very clever people out there who are barely capable of putting their shoes on the right feet!