Falling Leaves and Helicopters

Falling Leaves and Helicopters

Every now and then, I hear heli­copters over­head. And I joke, liv­ing in Los Ange­les, that heli­copters and sirens are the songs of my peo­ple. I like the sound. It makes me feel safe. Close to my house, there is a hos­pi­tal with a heli­pad. And every now and then, I hear a heli­copter fly­ing into my neigh­bor­hood, get­ting closer

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Abstract Algebra, Swimming and Rummikub

Abstract Algebra, Swimming and Rummikub

My last post was about the life of Évariste Galois and his con­tri­bu­tions to abstract alge­bra. Between that pod­cast and my recent addic­tion to Rum­mikub, this thought process then led me, or dis­tract­ed me, to think­ing about num­ber sets and groups. These math­e­mati­cians have writ­ten about groups, then about swim­ming, and the cur­rent Olympic tri­als for swim­ming, which then con­ve­nient­ly led me back to abstract alge­bra, which was the top­ic of my last post on Evariste Galois. My brain went full circle!

The History of Calculators

The History of Calculators

The year was 1983 and I was tak­ing the Scholas­tic Apti­tude Test, the SAT! It was spring­time in Den­ver, Col­orado, which meant it was snow­ing, as it usu­al­ly does until about June. I was prob­a­bly dressed in sweat­pants and leg warm­ers because, you know, the 80s. I remem­ber look­ing for­ward to the SAT test because I had been study­ing hard

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