Tag Archives: calculation

March 22, 2019

Math Games #1

Back at the start of March Mathness I promised the math would be “fun” (really!), but anyone would be forgiven for thinking the previous two posts about Special Relativity weren’t all that much “fun.” (I really enjoy stuff like that, so it’s fun for me, but there’s no question it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.)

Trying to reach for something a bit lighter and potentially more appealing as the promised “fun,” I present, for your dining and dancing pleasure, a trio of number games that anyone can play and which might just tug at the corners of your enjoyment.

We can start with 277777788888899 (and why it’s special).

4 Comments | tags: 277777788888899, algorithm, calculation, Collatz conjecture, computation, Mandelbrot, mathematics, multiplicative persistence, Numberphile | posted in Math

November 12, 2015

Logically Speaking

By Wyrd Smythe

ttab adder full If it hasn’t been apparent, I’ve been giving a bit of a fall semester in some computer science basics. If it seems complicated, well, the truth is all we’ve done is peek in some windows. From a safe distance. And most of the blinds were down.

I thought we’d finish (yes, finish!) with a bang and take a deep dive down into the lowest levels of a computer, both on the engineering side and on the abstract logic side. When they say, “It’s all ones and zeros,” these are the bits (in both senses!) they mean.

Attention: You need to be at least this ━▇━ geeky for this ride!

6 Comments | tags: adder, AND gate, binary, binary logic, calculation, calculator, computer chip, flip-flop, full-adder, half-adder, logic, NAND gate, NOR gate, NOT gate, OR gate, transistor, XOR gate | posted in Computers

October 20, 2015

Calculated Math

By Wyrd Smythe

calculation-0 The previous post, Halt! (or not), described the Turing Halting Problem, a fundamental limit on what computers can do, on what can be calculated by a program. Kurt Gödel showed that a very similar limit exists for any (sufficiently powerful) mathematical system.

This raises some obvious questions: What is calculation, exactly? What do we mean when we talk about a program or algorithm? (And how does all of this connect with the world of mathematics?)

Today we’re going to start exploring that.

13 Comments | tags: Alan Turing, algorithm, binary digits, calculation, Church-Turing thesis, code, computer program, data, information theory, lambda calculus, mathematical expression, Turing Machine, Universal Turing Machine | posted in Math, Opinion

October 19, 2015

Sideband #58: Halt! (or not)

By Wyrd Smythe

evaluate(2B || !2B)

Hamlet’s famous question, “To be or not to be?” is just one example of a question with a yes/no answer. It’s different from a question such as, “What’s your favorite color?” or, “How was your day?” What it boils down to is that the young Prince’s question requires only one bit to answer, and that bit is either yea or nay.

Computers can be very good at answering yes/no questions. We can write a computer program to compare two numbers and tell us — yea or nay — if the first one is bigger than the second one. Computers are also very good at calculations (they’re just big calculators, after all). For example, we can write a computer program that divides one number by another.

But there are questions computers can’t answer, and calculations they can’t make.

10 Comments | tags: Alan Turing, algorithm, calculation, Cantor's Diagonal, discrete mathematics, Halting Problem, Turing, Turing Halting Problem | posted in Computers, Sideband