Elementary Mathematical Methods - Session 1

Those people who want to register for the course, send me an email at george@madscitech.org. You may connect up with us tonight at 8 PM Central Time on Skype. Use my Skype name georgehrab. If you are not registered for the course, I will not respond.

New Writing on Information Theory: Some important theorems on Markov Chains, their proofs, and how to model Markov Chains in Mathematica. http://www.madscitech.org/information/information.html

New Information Theory Site on MAST

I have formalized my notes on information theory and placed them on the MAST website. You can find tham at http://www.madscitech.org/information/information.html

The Nature of Information V

In this installment I demonstrate how to determine some of the quantities we have been looking into using Mathematica 8. You can find it at this website:

http://www.madscitech.org/csg/it.html

under Information Theory V.

Been Away Again

I have been away for a couple of months. In that time my co-author on the book, Leonard Susskind, and I have been working on the final draft of our book THEORETICAL MINIMUM: Claswsical Mechanics and hope to have it done in a few weeks.

MAST is working on developing education modules for basic science.

I have had a paper on numerical modeling of the diffusion equation accepted for publication in The Mathematica Journal.

I will be working on the show The Wonders of Physics this year.

I will be doing more in the coming days.

Lots of Things: Mathematica Consulting to Quantum Gravity to Storm Chasing

It has been a month and a half since my last post. Sounds almost like confession, doesn't it?

I could say that I have been snowed under with work, I have been sick for a week, I have been planning and executing the storm chase from Hell and another that was very successful. I could say that I have been trying to get MAST into the Mathematica Consulting game. I could say that I have been working on a new idea in quantum gravity. All of these things are true, and yet none of them are sufficient.

The truth is that I have been somewhat lazy. For that I apologize. I will not promise not to do it again.

The Book Is DONE!!!

At 05:17 on Monday, 31 January 2011 I finished the first draft of the book Theoretical Minimum I: Classical Mechanics by Leonard Susskind and George Hrabovsky. This book was written in Mathematica 7 and Mathematica 8.

Major New result on Dinosaur Extinction

MAST member Jack Horner (not the paleontologist) has written a paper establishing that the asteroid impact theory of dinosaur exctintion is not necessary to explain the exctintion.

His paper can be found here: http://www.madscitech.org/csg/dinosaur.pdf

Project Updates

Hello!

I have been insanely busy the last week. Had a great Thanksgiving!

Just completed Chapter 9 in the book project, this is a survey of linear algebra. I am about to start in on chapter 10, Leonard Susskind's classical mechanics Lecture 5.

I am also developing the program for the Institute for Scientific Computing Summer School program. I am also working on developing courses for teaching Mathematica 8 online.

That's all for now.

Mathematica 8 Is HERE!!!

The new version of Mathematica has arrived! I have been playing with it for a day now. It is a substantial upgrade from version 7. I will write more about the new features as I play with them. One new feature is the integration with Wolfram Alpha allowing the user to use free-form commands to produce results without the use of syntax; this is limited and for people who know Mathematica, it will not be much of an addition, but it does allow people who do not know the system to begin exploring. The results also include the correct Mathematica syntax for what it thinks you want.

More later.