Ann Romney and my Brother

My brother, Peter Borwein, is a distinguished Canadian mathematician who has something intimate in common with Ann Romney. They both have multiple sclerosis. But as you will see from the following letter that he just wrote to me, the differences outweigh their similarities.

Ann Romney was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 1998. She was born in 1949. I was diagnosed with MS in 1996. I was born in 1953. Exact dates of diagnosis are inexact. MS rarely has an exact starting date. But we were both in our mid-to-late forties: a little atypically-late onset but not extreme.

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August 31st, 2012 | Category: Essays, News | Comments are closed

Mathematician William Thurston dies at 65

Famed mathematician William Thurston died Tuesday 21 Aug 2012, at his home in Rochester, New York, from cancer. He was arguably one of the handful of 20th century mathematicians — pure or applied — who will be discussed in some detail in 22nd century histories of mathematics and science. As Edward Tenner wrote in the Atlantic Even as he contributed to theoretical physics, Bill’s work was proof that the most abstract math can have gorgeous practical applications.

Although he did work in several areas, the majority of Thurston’s research work was in geometry and topology, namely the branch of mathematics

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August 23rd, 2012 | Category: News | Comments are closed

Numerical nonsense in the U.S. presidential campaign

The political world is seldom a source of high scholarship, but the current U.S. presidential campaign sets new lows. In addition to the worse-than-normal avoidance of substantive issues, and a very unpleasant level of mudslinging, numerical literacy has hit a new low. Here are some telling examples:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, during a July 2012 trip to the Middle East, compared the per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Israel, which he says is “about $21,000,” to that of Palestinian areas, which is “more like $10,000.” But as the U.K. Guardian notes, Israel’s per-capita GDP was $31,000 in 2011, while

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August 17th, 2012 | Category: Essays | Comments are closed

Talking points for “Algebra is essential in a 21st century economy”

In the wake of our previous article “Algebra is essential in a 21st century economy” (see Math Drudge blog and Huffington Post article), one of the present bloggers (DHB) participated in a “televised” interview with Andrew Hacker, the author of the New York Times article in question, together with several other respondents, organized by the Huffington Post. This transcript will be made available here when ready.

Here are some other “talking points” to consider on this issue:

Our economy is moving inexorably to information-age, high-technology careers, many of which require mathematics backgrounds. In a ranking of the top jobs published

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August 2nd, 2012 | Category: Essays | Comments are closed