Dataplot

Dataplot is a free, public-domain, multi-platform (Unix, VMS, Linux, Windows 95/98/ME/XP/NT/2000, etc.) software system for scientific visualization, statistical analysis, and non-linear modeling. The target Dataplot user is the researcher and analyst engaged in the characterization, modeling, visualization, analysis, monitoring, and optimization of scientific and engineering processes.

SpeedCrunch

SpeedCrunch is a fast, high precision and powerful desktop calculator.
Available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X.

The Simplest Universal Turing Machine Is Proved

Stephen Wolfram comments on the simplest universal Turing machine found.

See my previous blog as well.

For those of us that this is over our heads, buy his book, A New Kind of Science, for further explanation (which I hope to do soon).

Islamic Star Patterns

Islamic star patterns arose in the centuries after the birth of Islam, and spread quickly as Islamic rule grew outward from the Middle East to encompass western Europe, northern Africa, and southern Asia. This form of ornamentation peaked in the first half of the second millennium. The practice then tapered off as the borders of the Muslim world began to shrink. Today, historical artifacts can be found in countries from Spain to Uzbekistan, with important concentrations in Spain, Turkey, Iran, and Morocco.

Click here for more information.

World Digital Library

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

Brain Man

Almost 25 years ago, 60 Minutes introduced viewers to George Finn, whose talent was immortalized in the movie "Rain Man." George has a condition known as savant syndrome, a mysterious disorder of the brain where someone has a spectacular skill, even genius, in a mind that is otherwise extremely limited.

Morley Safer met another savant, Daniel Tammet, who is called "Brain Man" in Britain. But unlike most savants, he has no obvious mental disability, and most important to scientists, he can describe his own thought process. He may very well be a scientific Rosetta stone, a key to understanding the brain.

Click here for more information.

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

This site demonstrates visual phenomena, and optical or visual illusions. The latter is more appropriate, because most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye.

Logo++

Logo++ is an interpreter for drawing graphical figures following very simple instructions. Though it lacks many essential features of programming languages, it remains a funny start for beginners in computer programming, particularly for kids.

Internet gets first full census for 25 years

An electronic census of the internet's 2.8 billion addresses has been completed by US researchers. It is the first attempt to contact every web address since 1982 – the results could help tackle the problem of the supply of unique internet addresses running out.

Click here for more information.

Peanut Software

Peanut Software contains a number of free Windows mathematical software, including: Wingeom, Winplot, Winstats, Winarc, Winfeed, Windisc, Winlab, Winmat, and Wincalc.

IFS Construction Kit

IFS Construction Kit can be used to design and draw fractals based on iterated function systems. The program consists of three main windows. The IFS Window is where you can see and edit the code for the transformations that comprise the IFS. This window also shows the scale used in the other two windows. The Design window shows the effects of the transformations on an initial polygon. You can translate, scale, rotate, stretch, or shear transformations using the mouse, keyboard, or through a dialog box. This provides a way to define or modify transformations without having to enter the numbers in the IFS window. The Fractal window is where you draw the fractal obtained by iterating the transformations in the IFS, either by using the Random Algorithm or the Deterministic Algorithm.

A Prayer for Archimedes

A long-lost text by the ancient Greek mathematician shows that he had begun to discover the principles of calculus.

Click here for more information.

Science and the Islamic world—The Quest for Rapprochement

Interesting reading on why science and math vanished in the Middle East.

JW's Pictures and Patterns Site

JW's Pictures and Patterns Site has some interesting mathematically related information, including the 3x+1 problem, with observations and analysis, Pythagorean triples, and much more.

Metamath Proof Explorer

Inspired by Whitehead and Russell's monumental Principia Mathematica, the Metamath Proof Explorer has over 6,000 completely worked out proofs in logic and set theory, interconnected with over a million hyperlinked cross-references. Each proof is pieced together with razor-sharp precision using a simple substitution rule that practically anyone can follow, not just mathematicians. Every step can be drilled down deeper and deeper into the labyrinth until axioms of set theory—the starting point for all of mathematics—will ultimately be found at the bottom. You could spend literally days exploring the astonishing tangle of logic leading, say, from 2+2=4 back to the axioms.

Wolfram 2,3 Turing Machine Research Prize

A universal Turing machine is powerful enough to emulate any standard computer.
The question is: how simple can the rules for a universal Turing machine be?

Since the 1960s it has been known that there is a universal 7,4 machine. In A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram found a universal 2,5 machine, and suggested that the particular 2,3 machine that is the subject of this prize might be universal.

The prize is for determining whether or not the 2,3 machine is in fact universal.

Click here for more information.