Articles – Konrad Voelkel's Blog

A long time ago, I switched from Micro$oft Windows to GNU/Linux. Since Ubuntu, I even recommend GNU/Linux to non-computerfreaks. Sadly, Ubuntu is not perfect. In particular, some applications are still missing. What follows is a wish-list of future Ubuntu features/applications. Some of these are available on Windows or Mac OSX, most aren’t.

Read more about A survey of GNU/Linux shortcomings »

MathOverflow is a relatively new place for mathematicians to ask and answer research questions or just watch other mathematicians’ discussions to learn. Since it’s growing like the arXiv, it’s no longer possible for me to read everything interesting without investing “too much” time. Like for the arXiv, where we have the arXiv Blog that looks for some of the most interesting (physics) papers submitted, there ought to be an excerpt-of-MO, too. This way, you could subscribe to your special fields of interest in a feed reader and additionally read some not-that-specialised questions picked by someone else.

I’m not going to do this, but in this post I’ll present some of my favourites from the last months at MathOverflow (omitting the more subject-specific ones):

Read more about Found on MathOverflow »

We look at the model structure Voevodsky and Morel use in their 1999 IHES paper and discuss 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 1.9, 1.10. There is nothing difficult or particularly interesting, but you might want to look up some specific issue or reference.

Read more about Walk-through to Morel-Voevodsky A¹-homotopy theory, page 48-50 »

On dimensions-math.org you can see a whole bunch of before unseen geometry videos introducing 2-, 3- and 4-dimensional space, complex numbers and even more to the non-mathematician (somewhat similar to the well-known Not-Knot-videos and the Moebius transformations on YouTube, but with lots of explanations). The computer animations are available on DVD and online, for free. The explanations are in many different languages.

This is something not to miss if you’re interested in mathematics, and it might also be valuable if you’re taking a first course in complex analysis. Even after you’ve taken a course on complex analysis, you might enjoy the animation of the Hopf fibration (which I liked most).

Go straight to watching the videos in English.

via The Math Less Traveled (via Wadler’s Blog)