Bharat Rakshak

An achievement of a Chinese-born mathematician in remarkable circumstances: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130519-unheralded-mathematician-bridges-the-prime-gap/ he had found it difficult to get an academic job, working for several years as an accountant and even in a Subway sandwich shop...

Ashura seems to be a festival commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. It appears that some people get a bit too carried away in the celebration and unaccustomed people find it disturbing. Jihad watch on Ashura in London: http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/11/like-a-scene-from-a-horror-film-shiites-...

New York Times' heart bleeds for Muslims in America: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/us/06muslims.html American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong? By LAURIE GOODSTEIN Published: September 5, 2010 America is the land of all kinds of freedoms: “We worry: Will we ever be really completely accepted in ...

maths shaken by the 'unprovable' This matter of "unprovability" and its ramifications has affected philosophy more than mathematics itself, I would say. Kurt Goedel proved that it is not possible to prove consistency of systems like arithmetic, and thus, most of mathematics. A concrete ex...

Musharraf indulges in un-Islamic activity:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJwU8jjbv-c

proper original : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycIJjwJn8Ow .. what a melody.

some magazines which publish articles (or book reviews) about recent changes in Mathematics for non-experts like myself (I am a science graduate but not a Mathematician). mathematical intelligencer Try "Notices of the american mathematical society" also, available online at: www.ams.org/n...

Nandu wrote:So, was it because it was "generic" or because it had a particular structure that made the columns linearly dependent?

Sorry, I made a mistake above. I had meant to write that a generic matrix had nonzero determinant.

Here's a nice classroom experience story, based on the principle that a "generic" matrix has zero oops, sorry, nonzero determinant:

http://www.thehcmr.org/issue1_1/gaitsgory.pdf

Yes, and the proof is really very simple, suppose if (p1,p2,p3,.... p_n) are the only prime numbers.. take $ (p1)(p2)(p3)..(p_n)+1 $ is either prime, or not divisible by any of the primes above (it will leave a remainder or 1) .. in any case you found a prime larger than p_n ...so you found 1 more....

Yeah, he should have moved each guest from room n to room 2n, and given the m-th new guest room 2m-1. Well, here you first create an infinite number of vacant rooms. Why would you do that, unless you were knowing in advance about the infinite number of incoming guests? Anyway, here's yet another de...

Next one.

Simplify (x-a)(x-b)(x-c).....(x-z).

Nandu wrote: Hmm... turns out the solution is not much different from the Josephine puzzle.

What is the Josephine puzzle?

Good work, Nandu. Next is a lesson in plausible deniability, a notion much discussed in this board. I found the story from the wikipedia page for "Supertask". Might give the strategists some ideas. :D A man called Prometheus angers Zeus, so Zeus gathers an infinite number of demons and iss...

Puzzle 2 : Grandma made a cake whose base was a square of size 20 by 20 cm and the height was 10 cm. She put chocolate icing on top of the cake and on the sides, but not on the bottom. She wanted to divide the cake fairly among her 8 grandchildren so that each child would get an equal amount of the...

I found it in the interwebs. The solution is quite simple. But it's fun to try nevertheless. It is important to do the puzzles in the order. Puzzle 1 helps in obfuscating the mind as preparation for the second. Puzzle 1 : Grandmother made a cake whose base was a square of size 20 by 20 cm and the he...

Here's a puzzle discussed at Terry Tao's blog:

http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2008/02/0 ... rs-puzzle/

Solutions and detailed arguments are in the comments.

also 'intellectually' inclined which does not stand up to scrutiny based on the interesting but noway profound prblems discussed here notwithstanding some formidable minds posting here. How about some light tones then? Two calculus jokes from: http://www.workjoke.com/mathematicians-jokes.html 1. A ...