Category Archives: infinity

Rational numbers and decimal expansions

Posted on September 7, 2008 by

As you may remember from school, rational numbers have a terminating or eventually repeating (periodic) decimal expansion, whereas irrational numbers don’t. So, for example, 0.123123123123…, with 123 repeating forever, is rational (in fact, it is equal to 41/333), whereas something … Continue reading →

Posted in infinity, iteration, number theory, pattern | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Recounting the Rationals, part II (fractions grow on trees!)

Posted on January 7, 2008 by

Today I’d like to continue my exposition of the paper “Recounting the Rationals”, which I introduced in a previous post. Recall that our goal is to come up with a “nice” list of the positive rational numbers — where by … Continue reading →

Posted in infinity, number theory, pattern, recursion, sequences | 22 Comments

Carnival of Mathematics #23: Haiku Edition

Posted on December 28, 2007 by

Welcome to the 23rd Carnival of Mathematics: Haiku Edition! First, I must apologize for the delay: I usually have very little trouble with my hosting provider, but of course it went down just when the CoM was supposed to be … Continue reading →

Posted in algebra, books, calculus, challenges, counting, fractals, geometry, infinity, links, meta, number theory, pascal's triangle, pattern, people, sequences, trig, video | 17 Comments

Recounting the Rationals, part I

Posted on December 27, 2007 by

This is the first in a series of posts I’m planning to write on the paper “Recounting the Rationals“, by Neil Calkin and Herbert Wilf, mathematicians at Clemson University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. I’m really excited about it, … Continue reading →

Posted in counting, infinity, number theory, pattern, sequences | 19 Comments

Open problems: Twin prime conjecture

Posted on April 10, 2007 by

Oops, so much for posting once a week! My excuse is that I’ve been hard at work on my book. Well, nothing to do but get right back at it. I promise* I will be better** about posting regularly*** from … Continue reading →

Posted in challenges, famous numbers, infinity, primes | 3 Comments

New bookshelf entry: The Book of Numbers

Posted on September 20, 2006 by

After seeing John H. Conway and Richard Guy‘s The Book of Numbers cited in yet another interesting article/book/whatever, I finally decided that I clearly had to read it. (It seems to get cited a lot in certain circles.) I wasn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in books, famous numbers, geometry, golden ratio, infinity, links, primes | 3 Comments

The Mandelbrot Set

Posted on May 8, 2006 by

For those of you already familiar with the Mandelbrot Set, I suppose this will be like visiting with an old friend. For those of you who aren’t — you’re in for a treat! Okay, you say, that looks pretty cool … Continue reading →

Posted in convergence, fractals, infinity, iteration | 1 Comment