数学博物馆
2009
For ten years, Glen Whitney, a mathematician, worked as an algorithm manager at the giant quantitative hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, on Long Island. He was the man—or one of many—in the so-called “black box.” During that time, Renaissance did extremely well, as did Whitney, and so when he left the firm, last year, he had the wherewithal to devote himself to his favorite shower-time epiphany—that what the world needs (if not most, then at least a lot) is a museum devoted to math. The equation goes something like this: for the variables Expertise (E), Computational Power (CP), Capital (C), Risk (R), Altruism (A), Obsession (O), Indifference (I)
He stopped at a fire hydrant, produced a wrench, and explained the rationale behind pentagonal lug nuts (they are wrench-proof) and reverse-threaded screws (they are righty-tighty-lefty-loosey-proof). As the group moved to Whole Foods for a discussion of queueing theory, Sylvain Cappell, a math professor at N.Y.U., and a member of the math museum’s advisory council, indulged a mathophobe with back-of-the-classroom mutterings about the ham-sandwich theorem (any two slices of bread and chunk of ham can be bisected on a single plane), the optimization of prepared foods, and the curiously frequent incidence, at least in the nineteen-eighties, of high-school calculus teachers who were also football coaches. The tour ended in Columbus Circle—within sight of the unisphere, at the foot of Trump Tower—with a discussion of Eratosthenes, Christopher Columbus, and the measurement of the earth. No question, math was cool.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/08/03/090803ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz2HNS1kaaA
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/08/03/090803ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz2HNRrY3Gc
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/08/03/090803ta_talk_paumgarten
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/writers-should-learn-math.html
For ten years, Glen Whitney, a mathematician, worked as an algorithm manager at the giant quantitative hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, on Long Island. He was the man—or one of many—in the so-called “black box.” During that time, Renaissance did extremely well, as did Whitney, and so when he left the firm, last year, he had the wherewithal to devote himself to his favorite shower-time epiphany—that what the world needs (if not most, then at least a lot) is a museum devoted to math. The equation goes something like this: for the variables Expertise (E), Computational Power (CP), Capital (C), Risk (R), Altruism (A), Obsession (O), Indifference (I)
He stopped at a fire hydrant, produced a wrench, and explained the rationale behind pentagonal lug nuts (they are wrench-proof) and reverse-threaded screws (they are righty-tighty-lefty-loosey-proof). As the group moved to Whole Foods for a discussion of queueing theory, Sylvain Cappell, a math professor at N.Y.U., and a member of the math museum’s advisory council, indulged a mathophobe with back-of-the-classroom mutterings about the ham-sandwich theorem (any two slices of bread and chunk of ham can be bisected on a single plane), the optimization of prepared foods, and the curiously frequent incidence, at least in the nineteen-eighties, of high-school calculus teachers who were also football coaches. The tour ended in Columbus Circle—within sight of the unisphere, at the foot of Trump Tower—with a discussion of Eratosthenes, Christopher Columbus, and the measurement of the earth. No question, math was cool.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/08/03/090803ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz2HNS1kaaA
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/08/03/090803ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz2HNRrY3Gc
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/08/03/090803ta_talk_paumgarten
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/writers-should-learn-math.html
