cool-ass nerd stuff
Ok, so I decided that for about the first time in my life that I'd try to educate myself for this election. So I picked up the Voter's Guide at Spot today. I am about 30 seconds into it, and already it's making me crazy. God I hate politics. I always feel a little guilty for being so utterly uninformed about politics- but at the same time there's something to be said for my peace of mind, I think.
So I was studying, and reading a chapter about lung cancer, and there was the following in my book:
Huh? Aren't unusual and frequent sort of opposites? eh, whatever.
And later it talked about how if you have to remove part of the trachea, in order to keep tension off the stitches while it heals, the usual thing to do is to sew the person's chin to his breastbone for 7 days.
I certainly hope I never have to do that. How horrifying.
Ok, but to my point-
I tend to be scientific and analytical about things. Pretty uncreative, and generally very skeptical of things I can't explain. Hence the whole atheism bit.
But was talking to a friend the other day, and got to talking about freaky math- chaos theory, fractals, etc. And the Fibonacci sequence. A simple sequence, where you start with 0,1 and then just add the previous two numbers together to get the next one. 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc. No big deal, simple, just some numbers, right?
Well... it turns out that if you plug this into mathematical modelling programs, it will predict, quite accurately, the way branches come off a tree. Or rivers fork and divide. Or the way the human lung is divided into smaller and smaller segments.
And then other equations can map out the stripes of a zebra or the pattern on a shell...
How freaking geek-cool is that?
Must say it kinda gives me goosebumps... Maybe there is something up there in charge of it all, after all. ;)
Here's a cool little article about it. (and this is not new news- this is from 1993).
p.s. paul that reminds me- what happened to the newsfeeds and stuff that used to be over on the right?
So I was studying, and reading a chapter about lung cancer, and there was the following in my book:
Primary tracheal tumors are unusual, frequent occurances.
Huh? Aren't unusual and frequent sort of opposites? eh, whatever.
And later it talked about how if you have to remove part of the trachea, in order to keep tension off the stitches while it heals, the usual thing to do is to sew the person's chin to his breastbone for 7 days.
I certainly hope I never have to do that. How horrifying.
Ok, but to my point-
I tend to be scientific and analytical about things. Pretty uncreative, and generally very skeptical of things I can't explain. Hence the whole atheism bit.
But was talking to a friend the other day, and got to talking about freaky math- chaos theory, fractals, etc. And the Fibonacci sequence. A simple sequence, where you start with 0,1 and then just add the previous two numbers together to get the next one. 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc. No big deal, simple, just some numbers, right?
Well... it turns out that if you plug this into mathematical modelling programs, it will predict, quite accurately, the way branches come off a tree. Or rivers fork and divide. Or the way the human lung is divided into smaller and smaller segments.
And then other equations can map out the stripes of a zebra or the pattern on a shell...
How freaking geek-cool is that?
Must say it kinda gives me goosebumps... Maybe there is something up there in charge of it all, after all. ;)
Here's a cool little article about it. (and this is not new news- this is from 1993).
p.s. paul that reminds me- what happened to the newsfeeds and stuff that used to be over on the right?
Chaos Theory makes my heart go pitter patter-its very near and dear to my heart.
I tend to frequent Math World and I get all excited over the various theories, law and to some extent the formulas. I am mostly interested in the application- I cant duplicate or create it- but ooh its so fun to puzzle it out.
If you dig Fibonacci, check out Math World-- and take a peak at Benford's Law. Cooooool stuff (for the nerdies among us)