Science News / A Prayer For Archimedes
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/8974/title/A_Prayer_for_Archimedes

An intensive research effort over the last nine years has led to the decoding of much of the almost-obliterated Greek text. The results were more revolutionary than anyone had expected. The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized.

To read.

"....The researchers have discovered that Archimedes was working out principles that, centuries later, would form the heart of calculus and that he had a more sophisticated understanding of the concept of infinity than anyone had realized."

Math videos

Many teaching videos on a number of math/science related topics.

“In this course we will be using the programming language Lisp...” Argh! Not that again! What is it with Lisp? Ok, maybe at Harvard they do that sort of thing, but this was MIT! Don't they hack computers here?

“If you already know how to program, you may be at a disadvantage because you will have to unlearn some bad habits.”

interesting account of someone's first taste of lisp

hen we want to use regular multiplication, but can’t, we bring out the big guns and integrate. Area is just a visualization technique, don’t get too caught up in it. Now go learn calculus!”

TED Talks Someone always asks the math teacher, "Am I going to use calculus in real life?" And for most of us, says Arthur Benjamin, the answer is no. He offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age.

A function accepts input and produces an output. Suppose we have a "chocolate-covering" function that produces the following outputs for the corresponding inputs: peanuts -> chocolate-covered peanuts rasins -> chocolate-covered rasins ants -> chocolate-covered ants We can use Lambda-calculus to describe such a function: Lx.chocolate-covered x This is called a lambda-expression. (Here the "L" is supposed to be a lowercase Greek "lambda" character). If we want to apply the function to an argument, we use the following syntax: Functions can also be the result of applying a lambda-expression, as with this "covering function maker": Ly.Lx.y-covered x We can use this to create a caramel-covering function: (Ly.Lx.y-covered x)caramel -> Lx.caramel-covered x (Lx.caramel-covered x)peanuts -> caramel-covered peanuts Functions can also be the inputs to other functions, as with this "apply-to-ants" function: Lf.(f)ants

al introduction to lambda calculus