Log24

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Knight Move for Trevanian

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:42 pm

Knight move” remark from The Eiger Sanction

“I like to put people on myself by skipping logical steps
in the conversation until they’re dizzy.”

The following logical step — a check of the date Nov. 18, 2017
was omitted in the post Futon Dream  on this year’s St. Stephen’s Day.

For further context, see James Propp in this journal.

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Futon Dream

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

” There’s a line from the movie ‘The Paper Chase’, in which
the fearsome Professor Kingsfield tells a room of first-year
law-school students ‘You come in here with a skull full of mush …
and you leave thinking like a lawyer.’ “

— James Propp on December 14, 2020, in . . .

Children of the Labyrinth.

Related material — Japanese Bed.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Box

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am

(Continued)

James Propp

"When I was a kid living in the Long Island suburbs,
I sometimes got called a math genius. I didn’t think
the label was apt, but I didn’t mind it; being put in
the genius box came with some pretty good perks."

— "The Genius Box," March 16, 2018

From posts in this  journal tagged "Black Diamond" —

Jack in the Box, by Natasha Wescoat

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Too Clever By Half

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:14 pm

"Particularly if a person thinks of himself as clever,
he will often have a hard time admitting his own ignorance."

John Ganz in the online New York Times  today.

"One model for what I’m trying to accomplish is the writings of
Martin Gardner. Some other models are … well, actually, I’m not
going [to] tell you; I’d much rather imitate these writers in hope that
you’ll notice the resemblance and figure it out. That’s a game
I’ll be playing with you over the next few years."

— James Propp, Mathematical Enchantments, June 17, 2015.

A check of my own ignorance of synchronology . . .

http://m759.net/wordpress/?p=50955,
a post of June 17, 2015.

Monday, June 11, 2018

Finite Fields in 1956

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:00 pm

The "more complicated" material mentioned by James Propp
in the previous post was notably described by A. A. Albert in 1956:

Sunday, June 10, 2018

Number Concept

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:45 pm

The previous post was suggested by some April 17, 2016, remarks
by James Propp on the eightfold cube.

Propp's remarks included the following:

"Here’s a caveat about my glib earlier remark that
'There are only finitely many numbers ' in a finite field.
It’s a bit of a stretch to call the elements of finite fields
'numbers'. Elements of GF() can be thought of as
the integers mod q  when q  is prime, and they can be
represented by 0, 1, 2, …, q–1; but when  is a prime
raised to the 2nd power or higher, describing the
elements of GF() is more complicated, and the word
'number' isn’t apt."

Related material —

See also this  journal on the date of Propp's remarks — April 17, 2016.

Pieces of April

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:25 am

This journal on April 16, 2018 —

Happy birthday to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Related material from another weblog in a post also dated April 16, 2018 —

"As I write this, it’s April 5, midway through the eight-day
festival of Passover. During this holiday, we Jews air our
grievances against the ancient Pharaoh who enslaved
and oppressed us, and celebrate the feats of strength
with which the Almighty delivered us from bondage —
wait a minute, I think I’m mixing up Passover with Festivus."
. . . .

"Next month: Time and Tesseracts."

From that next post, dated May 16, 2018 —

"The tesseract entered popular culture through
Madeleine L’Engle’s 'A Wrinkle in Time' . . . ."

The post's author, James Propp, notes that

" L’Engle caused some of her readers confusion
when one of the characters … the prodigy
Charles Wallace Murray [sic ] , declared 'Well, the fifth
dimension’s a tesseract.' "

Propp is not unfamiliar with prodigies:

"When I was a kid living in the Long Island suburbs,
I sometimes got called a math genius. I didn’t think
the label was apt, but I didn’t mind it; being put in
the genius box came with some pretty good perks."

— "The Genius Box," a post dated March 16, 2018

To me, Propp seems less like Charles Wallace
and more like the Prime Coordinator —

For further details, see the following synchronicity checks:

Propp March 16     Log24 March 16

Propp April 16        Log24 April 16

Propp May 16        Log24 May 16 .

Saturday, November 18, 2017

Cube Space Continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 4:44 am

James Propp in the current Math Horizons  on the eightfold cube

James Propp on the eightfold cube

For another puerile approach to the eightfold cube,
see Cube Space, 1984-2003 (Oct. 24, 2008).

Powered by WordPress