Math Mutation 81 A Billion Frenchmen Can Be Wrong

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Math Mutation 81 A Billion Frenchmen Can Be Wrong

FromMath Mutation

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Length:

4 minutes

Released:

Aug 31, 2008

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

Why does the word billion sometimes mean 10 to the 9th, and other times mean 10 to the 12th?

(Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com)

Released:

Aug 31, 2008

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Welcome to Math Mutation, a podcast for people of all ages where we discuss fun, interesting, or just plain weird corners of mathematics that you would not have heard in school.(Feedback email erik@mathmutation.com).

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Math Mutation 27 How Many Crayons Do You Need?: Surprisingly, any map can be filled in with just four colors. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 43 A Theorem Made Real: Strangely enough, pure math can tell us interesting things about global weather patterns. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 62 Names of God: In memory of Arthur C. Clarke. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 47 An Unusual Lottery: A strange lottery run by Douglas Hofstadter in the early 1980s, with interesting implications for human society. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 49 What Is Math Anyway?: After 50 episodes, I finally figure out what I'm talking about. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 37 Baby Math: Can 6-month old babies do basic subtraction? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 33 Watch Zeno Make Russia Disappear: Infinite series and sub-replacement fertility. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 14 Exponentials for Easter: Bunny math. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 25 Everything Is a Number: How Godel twisted statements about numbers into statements about statements. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 39 A Statistical Legend: The surprising story of how George Dantzig, the father of linear programming, earned his Ph.D. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 32 How Polish Math Saved Europe: Today we talk about an early Polish success in cracking the Enigma coding machine. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 67 Chaos: What appears to be random is not always random. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 16 Doodling: What kind of pictures do you draw when your attention wanders? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 34 Not Over Till It's Over: Has the riddle of Fermat's Last Theorem truly been solved? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 35 One Messed-Up Triangle: How non-Euclidean geometry lets you draw a triangle with three right angles. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
5 min listen
Math Mutation 26 That Krazy Kepler: Discussing one of Johannes Kepler's lesser known, and sillier, theories. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 52 Sparklines: Tiny graphs that look like words of text can be surprisingly useful. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
5 min listen
Math Mutation 71 What Goes Around, Comes Around: On a number line, are positive and negative infinity really the same point? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 104 Fortunes, Debts, Ursa Major, and Cow Urine: Looking at the contributions of the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 46 The World's Simplest Computer: A new theorem by a British undergraduate has just established the simplest possible computer. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 36 Christmas in August: How the Romans coped with the odd ratios of the day, the lunar cycle, and the solar cycle. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
5 min listen
Math Mutation 44 Friends in Mathematical Places: Story of a 19th-century Frenchwoman who pretended to be male for her career in mathematics, and how she revealed her identity to save Gauss. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 19 Throwing Darts At Your Problems: The power of randomized algorithms. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 69 Interesting Numbers: The unusual story of the Indian mathematician Ramanujan. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 130 Epsilons And Deltas: Those funny Greek letters that torment calculus students. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
5 min listen
Math Mutation 92 Hollow Days: The ill-omened days at the end of the year. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
3 min listen
Math Mutation 78 And You Thought Those Mice Were Smart: If mice can do probability theory, why can't worms do calculus? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 45 The Aliens Among Us: Can we calcuate the number of intelligent life forms in our galaxy with one simple equation? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 98 Math Day Madness: After E Day and Pi Day, how many other math-related holidays are there? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen
Math Mutation 95 Happy e Day!: Celebrating the constant 'e'. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
4 min listen

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Math Mutation 287: The Grim State of Modern Pizza: The surprisingly simple GRIM test, and how it helped to debunk the famous Cornell Pizza Studies. (Send feedback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 286: Adventures In Translation: I discuss my experiences translating "The Revolution of Promises" by Nelson Rodriguez Chartrand. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 284: Don't Square Numbers, Triangle Them: We discuss Buckminster Fuller's focus on triangles in his Synergetics. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 283: Escape From Infinity: If we deny the existence of infinity, does math still work? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 282: The Man With The Map: In memory of Maurice Karnaugh, we discuss the "K-Map", a nice shortcut for desinging electronic circuits. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 281: Pascal vs Mathematics: Discussing the final decade of Blaise Pascal's life, when he decided math and physics were unworthy of study. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 259: Is Reality Really Real?: Does Donald Hoffman's book "The Case Against Reality" prove everything we perceive is wrong? (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com) by Math Mutation
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Math Mutation 81 A Billion Frenchmen Can Be Wrong

Math Mutation 81 A Billion Frenchmen Can Be Wrong

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from Math Mutation