A Five-Session Course Taking Place on Saturdays February 27, March 5, 12, 19, 26 from 3:00 – 4:30pm
For over two millennia we have been using mathematics to describe the world around us. Over time we have relied more and more on mathematics to describe not just laws of physics and nature but now also the laws of biology, psychology, and even sociology. Why and how is this possible and useful? In 1960 the famous physicist and mathematician Eugene Wigner wrote a thought provoking essay on exactly this question. His article entitled “Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” dealt with the issue of why math is so successful at describing the universe around us. The answer — we don’t really know!! But the reason we can use math is because diverse phenomena show similar patterns of growth and behavior. In this series of lectures we will explore these unifying mathematical patterns that emerge across various fields and how they apply to real world problems. We will examine how certain special numbers like pi or e or the golden ratio keep popping up everywhere. We will also see how randomness rules our lives but there is a pattern beneath this randomness that brings about things like the “bell-curve.” We will see math being used to solve seemingly intractable problems like fair distribution of property and organ donation recipients. We will examine how math is used in creating codes and ciphers, ubiquitous in today’s security chips. Finally, we will see how in this interconnected world, networks of different kinds emerge having similar properties that can be described by graph theory.
All courses are free and open to the public. Call 212-243-4334 for more information or see www.nypl.org
