December 28, 2007
Does Math Matter?
So does math really matter? Well, it does to Jacob Steinhardt who won third place and a $40,000 scholarship in the 2007-08 Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology for his project, Cayley Graphs Formed by Conjugate Generating Sets of Sn, which involves the combination of two mathematical structures, "groups" and "graphs," potentially leading to custom-designed, highly efficient computer networks. Congratulations Jacob.
And math should have mattered more to the Army Corp of Engineers who announced in June that its repairs and upgrades to levees in New Orleans would let the system hold back floodwaters 5 feet beyond the Katrina level. However, more recently the corp announced that because someone used a minus sign instead of a plus sign, the levees would actually only protect against flooding 6 inches above the Katrina level.
As for me, I'm still trying to balance my post-holiday checkbook.
-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com
Posted by Jon Erickson at 11:14 AM Permalink
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