About this weblog
This is mainly an expository blath, with occasional high-level excursions, humorous observations, rants, and musings. The main-line exposition should be accessible to the “Generally Interested Lay Audience”, as long as you trace the links back towards the basics. Check the sidebar for specific topics (under “Categories”).
I’m in the process of tweaking some aspects of the site to make it easier to refer back to older topics, so try to make the best of it for now.
44 Comments »
Leave a reply to John Armstrong Cancel reply
RSS Feeds
The Unapologetic Mathematician 
You asked if I found an OS written in Lisp that I should mention it, sadly it’s not Unix-like but it is interesting nonetheless: FunOS.
I really enjoy reading your site however your formulas are not parsing correctly at the moment.
its probably a problem with the external way you parse them but just in case you hadn’t noticed yet.
Joel, yeah, I’ve noticed the embedded LaTeX going screwey at a bunch of WordPress sites recently. I hope it’ll pass, but there’s nothing I can really do at the moment.
I found you saying (in another post) that the ETS regraded the SAT and hence a static average in maths score is actually a drop of 50/1000 points – or something like that. Can you please email me some reference so I can understand what you mean by this? I am trying to understand the issue. Thanks.
Some of us are starting up a blog as we enter graduate school, and (as the LaTeX-guy) how you embed LaTeX symbols into your wordpress posts? Is there a reference for how to do this?
cheers-
Eric
felicis, I commend the effort. As for using LaTeX in posts and comments on WordPress-hosted weblogs, the details on that are here.
Ah ha! Thank you very much! It’s easy, and we can even use
in comments! Hurray!
cheers-
Eric (aka Felicis)
Hi, I came across your site and thought it would be great for one of our clients. If interested in an advertising venture please feel free to contact me.
Great blog!
[…] mathematicians value communicating their ideas to non-specialists (what John Armstrong calls the Generally Interested Lay Audience (GILA)), I should probably be putting my money where my mouth […]
Pingback by GILA I: Group actions and equivalence relations « Annoying Precision | June 14, 2009 |
It’s in fact pretty easy to search through your blog if it’s added to Google Reader. For instance, I typed in “group theory” in the GR’s search, and it showed all your entries where you ever mentioned it. If you don’t use it already, I highly recommend it. Thank you for all the work you’ve put into your blog.
That’s a good point, Sara. I hope to keep it going for a good while yet.
I just have to know: is the title of this blog related to G.H. Hardy’s essay “A Mathematician’s Apology”? If so, kudos. If not, kudos.
Yes, specifically that I’m not acting as an apologist, defending mathematics as a field from detractors.
Hi, it would be very pleasant (to me) to see if you could say something about automorphisms of the
-module 
for which the answer is know: as a set is 
. Please.
it would say
juan, that sounds suspiciously like a request that I do your homework.
not exactly i only want to seek interaction on a very pretty subject. Did you know that the MCG of the torus and the genus-three-non-orientable surface are equal? Anyway thanks and kudos for yer work 🙂
Hey John, the ‘unapologetic mathematician.’ So I’m currently searching for my 3rd and final interviewee, and returned to John B’s webpage to check out the blog roll, see if there were any sites I forgot to hit up.
Then I saw the blog entry, ‘Sex Advice from Mathematicians’…
Nice. I loved it. And of course, I read your enthusiastic response. I’d love to have you down as the 3rd one (and most definitely, be as ‘unapologetic’ and fun with the questionnaire as you can! I highly encourage that!) Contact me as soon as you can, Much regards.
hi man, i saw that a year ago or so WP had a trouble with backslashes when editing matrices in latex… so the quizz is: How did they solve the problem then?
do you have now this very same problem now, how i have today? please
Best I can tell, Juan, the problem arose for me about a week ago. Since then, double backslashes have been replaced by single ones. The stopgap solution I’m using is to type triple backslashes where I mean to have double backslashes, but you have to replace these every single time you edit the post because triple backslashes get replaced by doubles, and then doubles will be replaced by singles when you save the post again.
good grief!, well i suspect that the trouble gonna solve alone i.e. under the good will of WP. I already complained at WP-support and someone dubbed Sheri Automattic told me that they are fixing this annoying extra-feature. Thanx and Saludos from Guadalajara…
Test (product of two matrices)
Hello,
could I ask some more clarifications regarding the Riemann-Stieltjes integral?
thanks
marco
Like what?
Well, I see how a Riemman integral is the summation of dproducts of the function f at an arbitrary value t, f(t) where x_i-1<t<x_i, times dx=x_i – x_i-1….
The R-S integral instead relates a function f to another function, g using dg(x) instead of to the infinitesimal dx….
the two integrals coincides if dg/dx is defined…..
When that is not defined, could we not just use the Cauchy principal value of the integral to deal with points where the function is not defined at some points in the interval of integration…..
thanks
M
I’m not sure really what you’re looking for in terms of “dealing with” points where
isn’t differentiable. It’s just not expressible as a Riemann integral. Why is this a problem?
[…] Unapologetic Mathematician – John Armstrong’s high-level educational math blog. You can pick some topic you want to learn and track back […]
Pingback by Math 2.0 – Konrad Voelkel's Blog | February 7, 2010 |
Dr. Armstrong,
I came across your blog while searching for “mathematics” in the wordpress search bar. I was one of your students at WKU. Ellen Boswell and I met with you to do various math problems. I’m not sure if you remember it, but I wanted to say that I appreciate it. I am glad to have found your blog and I look forward to reading it.
Sure I remember, Tyler. Glad you’re enjoying it, and I hope your master’s work goes well.
Dr. Armstrong,
I have installed the WP LaTeX plugin and when you go to my main blog page the LaTeX works. However, when you go to the specific post, the LaTeX gets lost. Do you know how I can fix this?
Thanks,
Tyler Clark
I don’t know, Tyler; I use the WordPress-hosted version, which does that for me.
One guess might be that it’s using a relative URL to find the
-rendering script, which gives the right absolute URL for the main page but doesn’t for the individual posts.
Nice blog.
I hope to see more interesting posts in 2011.
Science is interesting 🙂
Please post more if you get time! Any recommendations for other blogs of this nature?
Thanks
ANY POSITIVE SUGGESTIONS FOR MY 15 YR OLD GRANDSON WHO HAS DYSLEXIA AND HAS SHOWN MATH SKILLS.? AT 85YRS & CLOSE TO BLINDNESS , WILL REFER YOUR PHYSICS/MATH TO HIM FOR COMMENT… CHEERS !
Thank you so much for your effort in creating this invaluable work. I’m an undergraduate student in mathematics, and I’ve learned so much from your blog.
I often find this blog explains specific topics really well. However, I can’t easily browse through the whole blog and determine what other topics are discussed. I know you’ve mentioned you’re trying to make navigation easier, but I was wondering if there was simply an index page with all the posts you’ve made? Cheers
If you are the unapologetic mathematician, then why do you start this page https://unapologetic.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/the-taylor-series-of-the-exponential-function/ off with an apology?
What is a blath?
Thanks for following my posts. Will try to follow yours!
Notify me of new posts via email.
Nice blog, keep it up 🙂
[…] About this weblog […]
I am curious about a blogger who seems to be quite a competent mathematician. He also produces YouTube videos. However, I can find nothing about him. His name appears to be M L Baker and he had spent some time at the Univ of Waterloo. Any clue as to his identity?