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Hail Martin Gardner!

Brown

Penultimate Amazing
Brown
Joined
Aug 3, 2001
Messages
12,984
Few writers have had more influence on me than Martin Gardner. I was always pretty good at math, but Gardner showed me how to love mathematics.

Thanks, Martin!

His writings, especially his writings on mathematical topics, hold up very well. He has explained some concepts better than any professor or textbook that I've ever encountered. Also, I've found I can return to some of his Scientific American columns over and over again, and find them fresh and interesting each time.

I learned how to make a hexaflexagon almost 30 years ago, and I could easily make one today. Thanks, Martin, for showing me how.

I check the math of others using various tricks such as checking for divisibilty. Thanks, Martin, for sharing those tricks.

Martin also mentioned that 153 (like 370) is the sum of the cubes of its digits, and that fun bit of mathematical trivia has never leaked out of my brain. Because of Martin, I know that 1/89 has a curious decimal expansion. Because of Martin, I know that the first two digits to repeat themselves in pi are "26." Thanks, Martin, for pointing out the interesting properties of numbers.
 
Scientific American just isn't the same without his "Mathematical Games" column...
 
I think this week's commentary was a great issue, very enjoyable.

MC Escher also briefly mentioned, one of my absolute favorite artists (and philosophers!) but so much more than that, like Gardner.

One of the sad things growing up in a conservative religious environment was that I never studied or 'met' these guys when I was a kid. -sigh- I do regret the loss sometimes, kids should be introduced to those great ideas at an early age.

I liked the 'skeptic' girl's story and would not change a word. My own 15 yr old daughter writes and struggles in a world where irrationality has a firm hold. We do not all arrive at the same time, the simple story unfolded as a child would tell it.
 
Brown said:
Few writers have had more influence on me than Martin Gardner. I was always pretty good at math, but Gardner showed me how to love mathematics.

Thanks, Martin!
Click to expand...

I am useless at math but love puzzles, and found Martin Gardner's work in SciAm gobsmackingly exciting. I remember whiling away hours in med school in the library at night, trying to draw cellular automata like Conway's instead of studying.

Usually he lost me after a few paragraphs but the articles were so inspiring compared to Krebs citric acid cycles and the like.

Thanks Martin!

PS I wouldn't be saying this if I'd failed!
 
Because of Martin, I know that 1/89 has a curious decimal expansion.
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, what's the "interesting decimal expansion" of 1/89?

My calculator says 0.011235955056179775280898876404494

I can see the beginning of some patterns, like repeated digits ('55', '77', '88'), or repeated patterns like 'x0x' ('505', '808') and 'x9x' ('595' and '898'), but they're not coming together as a clear pattern for me...
 
Kopji said:
I think this week's commentary was a great issue, very enjoyable.

MC Escher also briefly mentioned, one of my absolute favorite artists (and philosophers!) but so much more than that, like Gardner.

Click to expand...

Who is the Escher guy?
:cs:
 
bouch said:


Just out of curiosity, what's the "interesting decimal expansion" of 1/89?

My calculator says 0.011235955056179775280898876404494

I can see the beginning of some patterns, like repeated digits ('55', '77', '88'), or repeated patterns like 'x0x' ('505', '808') and 'x9x' ('595' and '898'), but they're not coming together as a clear pattern for me...
Click to expand...

There is a connection with the Fibonacci series. If the Fibonacci numbers starting from zero are written so that the rightmost digits are in a uniform diagonal, the sum is the decimal expansion of 1/89:

0
-1
--1
---2
----3
-----5
------8
------13
-------21
--------34
---------55
......[etc].....
--------------
01123595505...
 
I think I own more Martin Gardner books than books by any other single author, with the exception of Carl Sagan. And go back and re-read Gardner's book far more than I read Sagan's.
 
doubt
Yeah... the avatar rocks.

If I disagreed with Gardner somewhere, it was some of his comments on Karl Popper. Popper's 'Conjectures & Refutations' was a 'first love' book on scientific thought for me. (And this does not make me a 'Popperian').
 
popper

And here I was just thinking that I particularly liked Gardner on Popper (and Carnap).

It's Gardner's weird quasi-religious views that get me.
 
I read the Scientific American Martin Gardner columns for years but I must not be as smart as brown by a long shot.

Some of the columns were so esoteric that I wondered what possible reason there was for them. Some of them were quite difficult to understand. Still, I did enjoy many of them and felt like an era was ending when the column ended.

Unfortunately, I lost my favorite book of Martin Gardner puzzles when I loaned it to my brother whose house burned down. It was a small book of about 50 problems I think. There was a chess problem in there that was only a few moves deep, which made it maddening that I couldn't figure it out. Alas, as I recall I had to look up the solution.

Does anybody have any idea what the title of the book I lost was. Since then I've bought a couple of martin Gardner books trying to find it, but I didn't order the right ones.
 
Gardner and Oz

While I, too, am an fan of Mr. Gardner, there is one hobby horse of his that annoys me. He has written several pieces on the literary merits of L. Frank Baum and his Oz series. In my opinion, his affections are misplaced. I tried to read the works to my children and all of us agreed that they were both stupid and dull. Apparently, many of my collegues in the library profession agree. Mr. Gardner has attacked us in print in several columns for not stocking the Baum books in our libraries. I'm not a public librarian now so I can't really comment on not having them in the library. I know if I WERE in a public library, I'd stock the set but I can't think I'd ever recommend a child read the books.

There also seemed to be a bit of national pride in Mr. Gardner's assessment of these books. To him, they are AMERICAN fantasy, therefore they are good fantasy. I beg to differ.
 
Zep said:
Mathematical Games = Metamagical Themas
Click to expand...
Yes, an anagram of Martin Gardner's column and title of a book by Douglas Hofstadter......wait, he continued Gardner's column in Scientific American under this title and collected his essays in a book of the same name......at least I think that's the way it went.
 
I don't mean to drag the topic off-topic, but I have never had any reason to know anything about Martin Gardner's non-metamagical thinking. I have read Aldous Huxley's writings from the 1920s and know that he for one was a person that used literary and mathematical references. In plain view, by knowing something about both topics. And Lewis Carroll/Dodgson/Gardner is I hope beyond reproach, of course I mean the Annotated Alice. My childhood was very well changed by that book.... it got me interested in the symbolic logic game Carroll made, the one with all the Frog story/problems in it.
 
Re: Gardner and Oz

Originally posted by soccer_ref He has written several pieces on the literary merits of L. Frank Baum and his Oz series. In my opinion, his affections are misplaced.
Click to expand...

Myself and many of my friends (not to mention countless millions of others) have enjoyed these books tremendously as children. I'm guessing I would enjoy them less now, but they weren't exactly written for adult sensibilities now were they? While reasonable people may subjectively disagree, why get your panties in a knot simply because someone enjoys something that you do not? I loathe and despise Adam Sandler and his "comedy", but I don't get all bent out of shape if one of his movies does well or if one of my friends happens to enjoy his work.
 
I was just going to sit down and see if I could figure why 1/89 was special but Rex beat me to it . I was a little annoyed at not seeing it right away .
I agree with most that has been said here . It's so refreshing to be discussing something that we can all agree on .
Mathematics is the one area of human understanding that remains true. What I mean is that Euclids geometry may not describe our universe but the mathematics are still true and always will be true . Non-Euclidean geometry is more likely to describe the universe but even if it does not it's still true within it's own assumptions .
 
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