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Jim Loy's Mathematics Page

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"He must be a 'practical' man who can see no poetry in mathematics." - W. F. White.

compasses & straight edgeDedicated to the memory of Isaac Asimov. See the top of my Science pages for comments on Dr. Asimov.

Math Forum Internet News My Mathematics Pages were described briefly in the Math Forum Internet News No. 5.48 (27 November 2000).

Math Forum Internet News My Mathematics Pages were listed on ENC Online's Digital Dozen for Sep. 2003, as one of the most educational sites on the WWW. ENC is the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse, and is concerned with science and mathematics education.


My theorem: There are no uninteresting numbers. Assume that there are. Then there is a lowest uninteresting number. That would make that number very interesting. Which is a contradiction.

A number of readers have objected that "numbers" in the above theorem should be "natural numbers" (non-negative integers). My reply to one reader was this:

Yes, but I wanted to keep it simple and quotable. And the proof that all numbers are interesting should not be boring. From natural numbers, it can be generalized to rationals, as fractions with interesting numerators and denominators are obviously interesting. And what could be more interesting than an irrational that cannot be formed from any finite combination of rationals? I see that David Wells' book Curious and Interesting Numbers has something similar: "39 ... seems to be the first uninteresting number, which of course makes it an especially interesting number, because it is the smallest number having the property of being uninteresting."

Also "uninteresting" is not well-defined. Several mathematics teachers have asked permission to quote my theorem.


Contents:


Algebra:


dodecahedron

Geometry:

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Calculus and Pre-Calculus

For the definition of the word function, see Analytic Geometry


Arithmetic, Roman Numerals ...

1999=MCMXCIX (or is it MIM?)
2000=MM.


Calendars and time:

Also see the Clocks and Time topic in my Astronomy pages.


Number Theory:


Sierpinski gasket

Fractals and Chaos:

See ArtsForge's Fractal Canvas Gallery.


Other topics:


Book Reviews:

My book reviews of mathematics related books:


Links to other mathematics pages:


Incidentally, in the USA, we often call mathematics, "math." In other English speaking countries, they seem to call it "maths."

Many of my mathematics articles contain special symbols, like ² or 2 for "squared." Caveman WWW browsers (as I call them) cannot always deal with these symbols. I am currently working on a project to provide an alternative page without special characters (with ^2 for "squared"). Please let me know if this is working or not, by sending me email. Several of my articles depend heavily on graphics. I hope you don't have trouble with those.


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