Questions tagged [popularization]

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8 votes
3 answers
736 views

Knot theory and creative writing

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Creative Writing and an M.S. Student in Mathematics and I'm writing my master's thesis on knot theory and trying to tie in applications to creative writing. Has anyone come ...
Andres Sanchez's user avatar
52 votes
1 answer
5k views

Mathematics of imaging the black hole

The first ever black hole was "pictured" recently, per an announcement made on 10th April, 2019. See for example: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873592 . It has been claimed that ...
Piyush Grover's user avatar
15 votes
1 answer
2k views

A fun game related to knot theory

I recently learned the following rather fun game: a group of people is standing up roughly in circle, facing each other. Then participants randomly join hands, in such a way that nobody holds its own ...
Adrien's user avatar
  • 8,234
3 votes
2 answers
2k views

Popular books written by great mathematicians [closed]

I read: H. Poincare. Value of science F. Klein. Development of Mathematics in the 19th Century J.E. Littlewood. A Mathematicians Miscellany G.H. Hardy. A Mathematician’s Apology R. Courant, H....
28 votes
3 answers
2k views

Intuitive pictures in characteristic p

This is a tough one, but does anyone know of any images that recall characteristic p geometry (over algebraically closed fields) in some sense? It is not enough if it is some picture that can be also ...
Jesus Martinez Garcia's user avatar
74 votes
14 answers
9k views

How to write popular mathematics well? [closed]

Recently, some classmates and I were lamenting the fact that our classmates in other disciplines had almost no conception of what we did, despite the large mathematics population at Waterloo. Instead ...
1 vote
0 answers
640 views

Popular level article on monster group

People who are not mathematicians (or high school students who are in maths) often become interested in what is the Monster Group - mainly because of unusual name. Since it's not my field, I'm able ...
119 votes
33 answers
14k views

Examples of theorems misapplied to non-mathematical contexts

For something I'm writing -- I'm interested in examples of bad arguments which involve the application of mathematical theorems in non-mathematical contexts. E.G. folks who make theological arguments ...
142 votes
24 answers
18k views

Occurrences of (co)homology in other disciplines and/or nature

I am curious if the setup for (co)homology theory appears outside the realm of pure mathematics. The idea of a family of groups linked by a series of arrows such that the composition of consecutive ...
23 votes
4 answers
1k views

Mathematics TV clips

I have just come out of a talk on presenting science to the public via mainstream media. I became jealous of what other sciences, such as astrophysics, have achieved in these media. This is ...
186 votes
47 answers
100k views

Magic trick based on deep mathematics

I am interested in magic tricks whose explanation requires deep mathematics. The trick should be one that would actually appeal to a layman. An example is the following: the magician asks Alice to ...
86 votes
61 answers
43k views

Favorite popular math book [closed]

Christmas is almost here, so imagine you want to buy a good popular math book for your aunt (or whoever you want). Which book would you buy or recommend? It would be nice if you could answer in the ...
193 votes
30 answers
77k views

Real-world applications of mathematics, by arxiv subject area?

What are the most important applications outside of mathematics of each of the major fields of mathematics? For concreteness, let's divide up mathematics according to arxiv mathematics categories, e.g....