Category Archives: Mathematics
Standard Deviation in IDL
The built in IDL standard deviation function in IDL, STDDEV, uses the moment function which treats the standard deviation as a sample, rather than a population. A short programme can give us both options.
Standard Deviation of Noise in TV Viewing Figures
As discussed in my last post we found that ‘the standard deviation of the noise in viewers is about 20% of the range of viewers’ for Grey’s Anatomy. I wanted to see if a similar figure was true for other … Continue reading
Graphical Analysis of Grey’s Anatomy Viewing Figures
I recently started watching Grey’s Anatomy which I’ve been enjoying. However a friend of mine told me that the later episodes are not as good. So I thought I would have a look if the viewing figures reflected this. … Continue reading
Velocity Required for Loop the Loop
Chris (@chris2306) got asked how fast you would need to be going to complete a loop the loop. This is what we got.
Largest Known Prime Number
We have a new largest known prime number! So here is an obligatory post about prime numbers.
It’s Snowing Outside!
I’m sitting in my office, at home, watching the snow falling outside and it got me thinking….
The Crawshaw Method (for Quadratics)
Something all GCSE maths students (and above) need to know, and something that a large number of people use everyday, is how to factorize quadratic equations. However I’m amazed how few people know a decent (and easy) way of doing this!
1 = 2
Many people have seen “proofs” that 1 = 2. However most of them have an obvious fallacy – a division by 0.
Sine Rule on a Sphere
A couple of days ago I wrote a post on what, and how to find, the cosine rule on a sphere. In this post I’ll show you the sine rule on a sphere.
Cosine Rule on a Sphere
As all (well, at least those that can remember) 15+ year old’s know, to find the length of a side of a non-right angled triangle you can’t use Pythagoras theorem and instead require the so called ‘Cosine Rule’.