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/

Mathematical Beauty

This week has been especially beautiful, mathematically speaking.

n-body problems are interesting and challenging.  By using the laws of gravitation and a computer and some very clever symmetry, many beautiful (and in a perfect world, stable) orbits are possible!

This set of simulations is one of the most amazing and beautiful I have ever seen. Toggle the trajectories, particularly on the last two in the list.

http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~jm/Choreographies/

Biofabric is a creative way to re-imagine network diagrams. What is particularly impressive is the short animation going from the old view to the new. See the blog detailing the process here.

before

after

Visualizing sports stats is a great way to engage students with the study of mathematics! Here are some of my favorites.  

http://statmilk.com/NFL/0/? and http://www.statmilk.com/NCAAF/0/? let you visualize just about anything you would want to know about the NFL and NCAA.

http://www.chartball.com/football/ offers a creative and interesting way to visualize football games. 

I hope you enjoy these and are able to work them into your classes.  I imagine that many interesting discussions can arise from having students explore statistics with the help of these websites.