"A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life"
— G. H. Hardy
"In response to the theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein exclaimed, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Though this never happened, I would like to think that Paul Erdo˝s and the great probabilist, Mark Kac, replied, “Maybe so, but something is going on with the primes."
—
http://www.ams.org/notices/199801/vertesi.pdf
-The Mathematics of Paul Erdos
I just learned that what a Billion is has changed quite recently.
Now when I say quite recently I mean like 1975, and in Britain.
Basically, originally a billion, having the prefix bi meaning two, meant a million million, or (1 million)^2 hence 10^12.
This way was how a trillion was defined, and with this system any prefix would make sense, so centillion, cent meaning 100, would be (1million)^100 or 10^600.
However in most of the English speaking world, a billion means a thousand million or 10^9. Before in the old system, a thousand million was called a milliard. Basically in the new system it’s based on powers of a thousand, so a million is still (1000)^2 or 10^6, but a billion is now (1000)^3 or 10^9, this pattern repeats, so lets say a centillion would now be (1000)^101 or 10^303.
Point being, people think the reason for this illogical change was that someone in the US messed up once with writing a billion and it kind of stuck.
However, most of the rest of the world still uses the “Old system” which are based on powers of a million as the names of each suggest.
To put this in perspective, what used to be a billion is now a trillion. Kind of makes you feel a little bit better about the debt of some countries.
If my calculations are correct, I just proved that there are 165068526724814240565166080000000 possible final Sudoku positions.
Note these were done in about 5 mins and only not thoroughly checked.
"Hold on.” He grabbed a pencil and scrawled excitedly at the paper as if he’s just made a mathematical breakthrough and then looked back up at me. “I just did some calculations, and I’ve been able to determine that you’re full of shit."
— Looking For Alaska—John Green
(Source: -little-owl-, via everybodygotdangerous)
"There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful."
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
(Source: theresonlymusic, via everybodygotdangerous)
"It makes the smallest of differences for me, a delta for my very large epsilon if you will."
— Emil Kerimov
Of course he was a virgin. Once upon a time, so was Madonna. What’s tragic is that he may have died a virgin. Not that this is all that unusual. You met many electrical engineers? But mathematicians are probably the worst that way. How the math gene perpetuates itself is one of the mysteries of our age.
To read the whole article : http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/957/was-isaac-newton-a-virgin
