Book Pulpit - The Haves and the Have Knots

by Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson started the meeting with an internet demonstration. Simply searching on "Knots," Mike showed access to hundreds of beautiful artistic mathematical knots, from the simple to the incredible. They come in gorgeous colors, some fluorescent. The demo can be viewed starting at the KnotPlot site; http://www.cs.ubc.ca/nest/imager/contributions/scharein/KnotPlot.html

Laura Oliveira read "Another Poem of the Gifts" by Latin poet Jorge Luis Borges and described his motivation and background. Jim Hankey presented several humorous nautical tales by Capt. Fredrick Marryat. Jerry Corbin discussed "Lord of the Flies". This led to a discussion of modern day (im)morality and ethics.

Mike presented a few anecdotes from the book "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers". How did Gauss, at the age of ten, add all the integers from one to one hundred in his head? The trick is simply explained in the book.

On one occasion mathematician Hardy mentioned to Indian mathematician Ramanujan that the number 1729 seemed rather "dull". Ramanujan responded immediately; "No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." But then, of course, we all knew that. Physicist, Richard Feynman, described a challenge to his mental arithmetic by a Japanese abacus master. Feynman didn't do very well until the cube root of 1729.03 was requested. Feynman won by quickly coming back with 12.002. He explains the lucky choice of 1729 in his book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" (page 177).

Next meeting will be on Sunday, October 18, 1 p.m., at the Duck and Decanter. Hope to see you there.