Tag Archives: statistics

Fearful symmetry: the beauty and power of tessellations

Irregular pentagon tessellation
Irregular pentagon tessellation. Image by R.A. Nonenmacher

We study mathematics for its beauty, its elegance and its capacity to codify the patterns woven into the fabric of the universe. Within its figures and formulas, the secular perceive order and the religious catch distant echoes of the language of creation. Mathematics achieves the sublime; sometimes, as with tessellations, it rises to art.

How tessellations work

Related Article:
Quiz: Tessellate this!

Under pressure: Pascal’s many places in the sun

The Pascaline, an early digital calculator invented by Blaise Pascal
The Pascaline, an early digital calculator invented by Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was the quintessential Renaissance man. After all, how many people have a computer language, a religious argument, a triangle, a mathematical theorem, a law of physics and a unit of pressure named after them? Here was a man who could not only pose a philosophical wager, but also invent the system for calculating its odds and a digital calculator with which to tally the results.

It is unusual for a prodigy to stray so widely and successfully from their first area of excellence, but, as Pascal put it, “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.”

What were the famous Blaise Pascal inventions?

From the clubhouse to the moon

Whether you regard golf as the epitome of Zen mind or, as Mark Twain put it, “a good walk spoiled,” you’ve probably wondered where and how such a peculiar pastime originated. Who would devise a sport that “consists of putting little balls into little holes with instruments very ill adapted to [the] purpose,” as one Oxford tutor noted? And furthermore, who thought that an expanse of hummocky, pitted grassland would make an ideal setting for it?

The Scots, that’s who.

Actually, the origins of golf are not quite that cut-and-dried. You might be surprised at who lays claim to the sport’s origin. You might also be astounded at the long history of women and minorities on the links, and some of the historic traditions and great players that have made the game what it is today.

What is the history of golf?