# Tag:games

• ## eBook ‘geometry and the absolute point’ v0.1

In preparing for next year’s ‘seminar noncommutative geometry’ I’ve converted about 30 posts to LaTeX, centering loosely around the topics students have asked me to cover : noncommutative geometry, the absolute point (aka the field with one element), and their relation to the Riemann hypothesis. The idea being to edit these posts thoroughly, add much […]

• ## mathblogging and poll-results

Mathblogging.org is a recent initiative and may well become the default starting place to check on the status of the mathematical blogosphere. Handy, if you want to (re)populate your RSS-aggregator with interesting mathematical blogs, is their graphical presentation of (nearly) all math-blogs ordered by type : group blogs, individual researchers, teachers and educators, journalistic writers,…

• ## How to play Nimbers?

Nimbers is a 2-person game, winnable only if you understand the arithmetic of the finite fields $\mathbb{F}_{2^{2^n}}$ associated to Fermat 2-powers. It is played on a rectangular array (say a portion of a Go-board, for practical purposes) having a finite number of stones at distinct intersections. Here’s a typical position The players alternate making…

• ## So, who did discover the Leech lattice?

For the better part of the 30ties, Ernst Witt (1) did hang out with the rest of the ‘Noetherknaben’, the group of young mathematicians around Emmy Noether (3) in Gottingen. In 1934 Witt became Helmut Hasse‘s assistent in Gottingen, where he qualified as a university lecturer in 1936. By 1938 he has made enough of…

• ## Seating the first few thousand Knights

The Knight-seating problems asks for a consistent placing of n-th Knight at an odd root of unity, compatible with the two different realizations of the algebraic closure of the field with two elements.

• ## The odd knights of the round table

Here’s a tiny problem illustrating our limited knowledge of finite fields : “Imagine an infinite queue of Knights ${ K_1,K_2,K_3,\ldots }$, waiting to be seated at the unit-circular table. The master of ceremony (that is, you) must give Knights $K_a$ and $K_b$ a place at an odd root of unity, say \$\omega_a…

• ## Olivier Messiaen & Mathieu 12

To mark the end of 2009 and 6 years of blogging, two musical compositions with a mathematical touch to them. I wish you all a better 2010! Remember from last time that we identified Olivier Messiaen as the ‘Monsieur Modulo’ playing the musical organ at the Bourbaki wedding. This was based on the fact that…

• ## The artist and the mathematician

Over the week-end I read The artist and the mathematician (subtitle : The story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the genius mathematician who never existed) by Amir D. Aczel. Whereas the central character of the book should be Bourbaki, it focusses more on two of Bourbaki’s most colorful members, André Weil and Alexander Grothendieck, and the many…

• ## On2 : Conway’s nim-arithmetics

Conway’s nim-arithmetic on ordinal numbers leads to many surprising identities, for example who would have thought that the third power of the first infinite ordinal equals 2…

• ## On2 : transfinite number hacking

Surely Georg Cantor’s transfinite ordinal numbers do not have a real-life importance? Well, think again.