Missing 20th century physicist, gorgeous maps

Linkdump from today's explorations

Disappearing physicist: http://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/04/02/night-crossing/ Who was Ettore Majorana? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana

From an excellent stats blog: http://andrewgelman.com/2014/03/29/agree-comment/

The problem is simple, the researchers are disproving always false null hypotheses and taking this disproof as near proof that their theory is correct.

Beautiful maps made with d3.js. https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/

Beautiful graphs and beautiful monsters

Linkdump from today's mathematical explorations

Beautifully graphs with clear explanations and interpretations are one of my favorite things.  This blog post by the 538 blog is a prime example of just that.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/four-strikes-and-youre-out/

While discussing counterexamples with a student today I mentioned the Weierstrass function. Here is an great blog post which gives some backstory to the development of and reaction to the function that is everywhere continuous and nowhere differentiable. A thumb on the nose to Newton.

http://nautil.us/issue/11/light/maths-beautiful-monsters
http://www.math.washington.edu/~conroy/general/weierstrass/weier.htm

The Weierstrass function is just one of many "Pathological Functions": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_%28mathematics%29

There are many here http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/740/useful-examples-of-pathological-functions and here http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22189/what-is-your-favorite-strange-function.  There is also an excellent book titled Counterexamples in Analysis which covers even more of these pathological functions in great detail. http://www.amazon.com/Counterexamples-Analysis-Dover-Books-Mathematics/dp/0486428753

Cellular Automata

Linkdump from today's explorations

This reminded me of Cellular Automata and Conway's game of life.

Post by Olya Petrakova.

There are 128 rules with last digit "1" 000 1 I'll have to experiment, maybe finally learn some processing, to list them all here. While searching differential equations, I found an interesting discussion about why the Navier Stokes equation is so difficult. This fits nicely into the blog post yesterday about equations. http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/56496/what-is-the-mystery-of-turbulence/66917#66917 The solution to the equation is an open question in mathematics and you can read a very precise (2 page) description of it here: http://www.claymath.org/millenium-problems/navier%E2%80%93stokes-equation It basically describes how fluids flow.

Compressible flow (air)
Incompressible flow (water)
 

Chile Earthquake Facts

Linkdump from today's explorations.

All items taken from this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/21yyig/an_80_magnitude_earthquake_has_struck_offshore/

USGS website info: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000nzvd#summary
USGS Summary report: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2014/20140401.php

Wave propagation map: http://i.imgur.com/RRmDfnQ.png
Wave propagation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhvfbjCIiXo
Hear the sound of the quake! (well, the sound of its seismic waveform) http://www.iris.edu/dms/nodes/dmc/tools/event/4597319

Pasta analogy which nicely explains the logarithmic nature of the strength of earthquakes: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bj_DmNbCIAErl1C.jpg