A Little Less Chaos In The World

[filkertom]

Mathematician Edward Lorenz, father of chaos theory, discoverer of "strange attractors", and coiner of the term "butterfly effect", has passed away at the age of ninety.

What's your favorite mathematical law, constant or formula? I'm an e=mc² man myself, although π and i will always hold special places in my heart.

ETA: And how could I forget the tesseract?

Comments

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

He coined the term "butterfly effect"? I thought that derived from Ray Bradbury's story, A SOUND OF THUNDER.

I'm all about the Pi. Long ago, I baked a pie in the shape of Pi. I need to do that again some time.

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

I was always fond of "e to the power of x = x". Don't remember shit about what it means, but I enjoyed the possibilities inherent in the phrase "e to the power of (e to the power of x)" - just so I could shout "Eex!" in class.

Yah - I was weird.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I just added a link up above. Bradbury wrote about the concept in 1952, but Lorenz coined the specific phrase in 1961.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

OK, didn't mean to be a noodge about it. [contrite]

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No, no, that's fine. What is science, but questioning for the truth?

Okay, it's also monsters and mutations and satellite death rays and minions and mad cackling laughter and crumpled receipts from Acme Co. and Agatha Heterodyne in a corset. But apart from that....

[veritropism.livejournal.com]

i is always a favorite of mine - irrational numbers are self-contradicting in ways that tickle my funny bone.

Writing the HTML to italicize it was amusing, too.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Hee. We need to drag you into Second Life for a visit to the Consulate of Europe Wulfenbach. Maybe a virtual concert. What do you think, sirs?

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

There are two kinds of people in the world. Weird and boring.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Very possible. Actually, I signed up with Second Life about a month ago, with the intention eventually of opening a music store there, if I can ever figure out the whys and wherefores. And I was figuring on a concert every once in awhile just for fun. Haven't spent much time on there, though. If you see a FilkerTom Smythe, that's me.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

In pure mathematics, the Euler equation

e^(pi*i) + 1 = 0

is just such a weird but elegant connection.

[jss]

Euler. e^iπ+1=0.

[jss]

Augh! You beat me by seconds!

[mannoftalent.livejournal.com]

I don't know how this qualifies math-wise, but Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle" has always fascinated me.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I'm rather partial to the Fourier series (and the related fourier transform), myself. I ran into it professionally in analysing the shapes of fusion targets back in my KMS days, and it's applications to image analysis were cool. And now that I've forgotten all the nitty-gritty of the mathematics, I appreciate it as being at the heart of musical sound.

[madmanotl.livejournal.com]

Interesting...

In high school, I had a classmate named Jon Lorenz who has some of his features. He got the other gold award in math at our high school graduation. I wonder if they were related somehow.

[momentrabbit.livejournal.com]

I have always been fond of Cole's Law, myself.

[bald-ruminant.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of the golden ratio, myself: φ = (1 + 5^½) / 2.

[bosswriter.livejournal.com]

On an irreverent take I will quote the words of the great Jimmy Buffet - "Math Suks" (from Beach House on the Moon album).

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

I myself am quite fond of the pseudo-math formula ∫e^x = f(uⁿ).

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Are you sure?

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

What a load of cabbage!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Zingerman's Roadhouse has an excellent proof of that, which goes very well with their Eastern North Carolina pulled pork sammich.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

This is my new favorite mathematical article, if this counts: Paola Antonelli and Benoit Mandelbrot talk, awesome happens. http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/paola_antonelli_benoit_mandelb.php

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I thought there were 10 kinds of people in the world....

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a snap.

You have a store with the songs listed adn the price (in Lindens, you know - est 270L per dollar). When they pay, they get a notecard with teh URL to the song's location on the web for them to download. Include a comment that they have only 7 days to get the song from the website.

On the website, you have all the html and songs in two directorys, 001 and 002. Every week, you increment both directories by one and you have everything in 002 and 003 now. No matter when they buy the song, the location on the web will be valid for at least 7 days and as much as 14 days. After that, the URL doesn't work anymore. Thus you need not fear the URL being passed around the internet and 10^6 people downloading it when you only made one sale.