What does the inside of a tesseract look like? Pascal’s Triangle can tell us.
Category: PBS Infinite Series
Mathematician Tai-Danae Bradley and physicist Gabe Perez-Giz offer ambitious content for viewers that are eager to attain a greater understanding of the world around them. Math is pervasive – a robust yet precise language – and with each episode you’ll begin to see the math that underpins everything in this puzzling, yet fascinating, universe.
Splitting Rent with Triangles
You can find out how to fairly divide rent between three different people even when you don’t know the third person’s preferences! Find out how with Sperner’s Lemma.
Network Mathematics and Rival Factions
The theory of social networks allows us to mathematically model and analyze the relationships between governments, organizations and even the rival factions warring on Game of Thrones.
How to Generate Pseudorandom Numbers
What is a the difference between a random and a pseudorandom number? And what can pseudo random numbers allow us to do that random numbers can’t?
How Infinity Explains the Finite
Peano arithmetic proves many theories in mathematics but does have its limits. In order to prove certain things you have to step beyond these axioms. Sometimes you need infinity.
Kill the Mathematical Hydra
How do you defeat a creature that grows two heads for every one head you chop off? You do the math. Mathematician Kelsey Houston-Edwards explains how to defeat a seemingly undefeatable monster using a rather unexpected mathematical proof. In this episode you’ll see mathematician vs monster, thought vs ferocity, cardinal vs ordinal. You won’t want to miss it.
The Mathematics of Quantum Computers
What is the math behind quantum computers? And why are quantum computers so amazing? Find out on this episode of Infinite Series.
Associahedra: The Shapes of Multiplication
What happens when you multiply shapes? This is part 2 of our episode on multiplying things that aren’t numbers.
The Multiplication Multiverse
Multiplication of numbers is an associative property and we can make sense of “multiplication” between things that aren’t numbers but that’s not considered as associativity.
Are Prime Numbers Made Up?
Is math real or simply something made up by mathematicians? You can’t physically touch a number yet using numbers we’re able to build skyscrapers and launch rockets into space.
Telling Time on a Torus
What shape do you most associate with a standard analog clock? Your reflex answer might be a circle, but a more natural answer is actually a torus. Surprised? Then stick around.
The Geometry of SET
In the card game SET, what is the maximum number of cards you can deal that might not contain a SET?
How to Divide by “Zero”
We all know you can’t divide by the number zero. But in some sense the notion of “dividing by zero” appears every time you use modular arithmetic! The structures that underlie this “modding business” are called equivalence relations and quotient sets
How to Break Cryptography
Only 4 steps stand between you and the secrets hidden behind RSA cryptography. Find out how to crack the world’s most commonly used form of encryption.
Stochastic Supertasks
Supertasks allow you to accomplish an infinite number of tasks in a finite amount of time. Find out how these paradoxical feats get even stranger once randomness is introduced. What happens when you try to empty an urn full of infinite balls? It turns out that whether the vase is empty or full at the end of an infinite amount of time depends on what order you try to empty it in.