Log24

The title is that of a presentation by Arnold Emch
at the 1928 International Congress of Mathematicians:

See also yesterday's "Emch as a Forerunner of S(5, 8, 24)."

Related material: Diamond Theory in 1937.

Further remarks:  Christmas 2013 and the fact that
759 × 322,560 = the order of the large Mathieu group  M₂₄ .

(Continued)

“Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

“By far the most important structure in design theory
is the Steiner system S(5, 8, 24).”

— “Block Designs,” by Andries E. Brouwer (Ch. 14 (pp. 693-746),
Section 16 (p. 716) of Handbook of Combinatorics, Vol. I ,
MIT Press, 1995, edited by Ronald L. Graham, Martin Grötschel,
and László Lovász)

For some background on that Steiner system, see the footnote to
yesterday’s Christmas post.

Previous post—

"… her mind rotated the facts…."

Related material— hypercube rotation,* in the context
of rotational symmetries of the Platonic solids:

"I've heard of affairs that are strictly Platonic"

— Song lyric by Leo Robin

* Footnote added on Dec. 26, 2013 —

 See Arnold Emch, "Triple and Multiple Systems, Their Geometric 
 Configurations and Groups," Trans. Amer. Math. Soc.  31 (1929),
 No. 1, 25–42. 

 On page 42, Emch describes the above method of rotating a
 hypercube's 8 facets (i.e., three-dimensional cubes) to count
 rotational symmetries —

See also Diamond Theory in 1937.

Also on p. 42, Emch mentions work of Carmichael on a
Steiner system with the Mathieu group M₁₁ as automorphism
group, and poses the problem of finding such systems and
groups that are larger. This may have inspired the 1931
discovery by Carmichael of the Steiner system S(5, 8, 24),
which has as automorphisms the Mathieu group M₂₄ .

Steve Martin's new novel An Object of Beauty  will be released tomorrow.

"The most charmingly rendered female schemer since Truman Capote's Holly Golightly."
— Elle  magazine

"Martin compresses the wild and crazy end of the millennium
 and finds in this piercing novel a sardonic morality tale….
 Exposes the sound and fury of the rarified Manhattan art world."
— Publishers Weekly

"Like Steve Martin's Shopgirl , this very different novel will captivate your attention from start to finish."
— Joyce Carol Oates

Martin on his character Ray Porter in the novella Shopgirl  (published Oct. 11, 2000)—

"He said, 'I wrote a piece of code
 that they just can’t seem to do without.'
 He was a symbolic logician. That was his career…."

As the above review notes, Martin's new book is about art at the end of the millennium.

See also Art Wars: Geometry as Conceptual Art
and some of my own notes from 2000 (March 9) in "Is Nothing Sacred?"

Some related material —

A paperback with a striking cover (artist unknown)—

Note that the background may be constructed from
any of four distinct motifs. For another approach to these
motifs in a philosophical context, see June 8, 2010.

"Visual forms— lines, colors, proportions, etc.— are just as capable of articulation , i.e. of complex combination, as words. But the laws that govern this sort of articulation are altogether different from the laws of syntax that govern language. The most radical difference is that visual forms are not discursive . They do not present their constituents successively, but simultaneously, so the relations determining a visual structure are grasped in one act of vision."

– Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key