Today (June 26th, 2015) I went to see one of my favorite teachers — Prof. Gilbert Strang. One day in 2009, while I was watching his Linear Algebra video lectures (http://ocw.mit.edu/…/math…/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/) in a quiet corner of my room, I started to realize an extraordinary beauty was slowly unfolding in front of me. I felt a deep gratitude for this person who introduced me to this beauty. That day I promised, someday, I will see him face-to-face and say “Thank You”. That is exactly what I have done today. This was on my Bucket list for quite some time and now it is …
Tag: beauty of mathematics
Positive Infinity and Negative Infinity
Recently, I watched a BBC documentary named “Horizon: Infinity” that illustrates several concepts of infinity. These are some thoughts that have been perplexing humans for a really long time. The most common facts about infinity are usually expressed using a concept of an infinitely large hotel – which has infinitely many rooms. Even when that hotel is full, it is possible to make room for 1, N or infinitely many new customers. How? If you need N rooms, tell all the existing customers to shift in room number i+N, where i is their current room number. You’ll get N free rooms (1 to N). If you need infinite …