Stfx Math/Stats Dept

06/04/2026

It's a bit late, but on April 30 some students and faculty from the department went for a walk in honour of Mohabat Tarkeshian.

05/23/2026

😍

At the turn of the 20th century, researchers were trying to wrestle mathematics onto firmer footing. They had only recently realized that their everyday intuition about numbers was completely wrong; now they were fervently debating which axioms, or obvious truths, they should build their theories on. Seemingly small differences in how they stated their most straightforward assumptions had major consequences for what would be possible or impossible to prove.

They used set theory to hash out these debates about the foundations of mathematics. In 1912, Felix Hausdorff, who had recently started teaching at the University of Bonn — where Scholze would end up generations later — set out to write the first comprehensive treatment of set theory. At the time, Hausdorff, then in his mid-40s, was already an accomplished writer: Under the pseudonym Paul Mongré, he had published a collection of poetry, two books of philosophy that tried to reconcile Nietzsche and Kant, and a play that was produced in 40 cities. As a mathematician, he was successful but not yet a superstar.

That changed after the 1914 publication of his book Fundamentals of Set Theory. In it, he gave the first description of topological spaces. A topological space is simply a collection of items that are grouped together into what Hausdorff called neighborhoods — today known as open sets.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/two-researchers-are-rebuilding-mathematics-from-the-ground-up-20260520/

05/23/2026

Love this explanation of category theory!

“I like to think of category theory as Mad Libs for mathematics. In Mad Libs, you have one story, but you get different versions of the story based on the different words you fill in. It turns out that there are certain stories or constructions that are shared across the mathematical landscape. Different branches of math might use different words for things — like ‘group’ instead of ‘vector space’ — but when you swap out words in the right way, you can see that the underlying framework or story is really the same.” — Tai-Danae Bradley
https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-does-meaning-live-in-a-sentence-math-might-tell-us-20250409/

05/23/2026

Haha

05/18/2026

Celebrating the birth of Bertrand Russell ❤️

Birthdate of Bertrand Russell (18 May 1872)

“I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, that it will one day learn to give the direction of its affairs, not to cruel swindlers and scoundrels, but to men possessed of wisdom and courage. I see before me a shining vision: a world where none are hungry, where few are ill, where work is pleasant and not excessive, where kindly feeling is common, and where minds released from fear create delight for eye, ear and heart. Do not say this is impossible. It is not impossible. I do not say it can be done tomorrow, but I do say that it could be done within a thousand years, if only men would bend their minds to the achievement of the kind of happiness that should be distinctive of man.”

— Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), Part Il: The Conflict of Passions, Ch. X: Prologue or Epilogue?, p. 238

Image: Bertrand Russell in the flower garden of his home "Plas Penrhyn" at Penrhyndeudreath, Gwyneda, United Kingdom, 22 June 1965. Penrhyndeudraeth means peninsula with two beaches in Welsh. National Portrait Gallery by Ara Güler.

05/18/2026

Love this.

Ranking every birthday, from most to least common. Where does yours rank?

05/18/2026

Interesting...

Does mathematics exist beyond human thought? Sergiu Klainerman, professor of mathematics at Princeton University, believes that it does – that mathematical truth precedes us and our job is simply to unearth it.

For objects that are so far removed from ordinary experience that direct observation may be impossible, like black holes, mathematics may provide more than a useful description; it may offer the only means by which they can be understood at all. Such objects, Klainerman writes, are ‘impossible to fathom outside their natural mathematical framework’.

This Essay by Steve Nadis explores not only Klainerman’s landmark proofs about black holes, but also his career-long fascination with a deep, unresolved mystery: Why does mathematics keep rearing its head, time and again, in the unlikeliest of places?

https://aeon.co/essays/for-sergiu-klainerman-maths-is-a-fact-to-be-divined

05/12/2026

05/12/2026

Daffodil season is here!

%% Daffodil Colors & Sizes
pc = ' '; % petal color
sc = ' '; % stem color
np = 6; % number of petals.
tr = .23; % Radius of trumpet
nruf = 10; % number of trumpet ruffles
sruf = .03; % size of trumpet ruffles
sr = .05; % radius of the stem
sh = 3.5; % Height of the stem
ln = 6; % number of leaves
lw = .3; % Leaf width
lh = 2.8; % Height of a leaf

%% Unit circle arrays
n = np*50+1; % Theta resolution
theta = linspace(0,2,n);
nr = 20; % Radus resolution
r = linspace(0,1,nr)';

%% Petals
PR = r .* ((1-abs(1-mod(theta*np, 2)))/2+.5);
PX = PR .* cospi(theta);
PY = PR .* sinpi(theta);
PZ = r.^3*.05+hypot(PX,PY)*.2;
% Face our flower sideways by swapping Y&Z
surf(PX,PZ,PY,[],'FaceColor',pc,'EdgeColor','none');

%% Trumpet
flute = flip(1-r*.3);
ruffle = ((cospi(theta*nruf)+2)*sruf).*r.^5;
ruffle2 = ((cospi(theta*nruf*3)+2)*sruf/3).*r.^9;
TR = tr*flute + ruffle + ruffle2;
surface(TR.*cospi(theta),r*tr*3.2,TR.*sinpi(theta),'FaceColor',pc,'EdgeColor','none');

%% Stem
SR = sr .* ones(nr,1);
surface(SR.*cospi(theta),SR.*sinpi(theta)-sr,r*-sh.*ones(1,n),'FaceColor',sc,'EdgeColor','none');

%% Leaves
rn = 100; % # verts in radius
tn = 11; % # verts in theta
R = linspace(0,.6,rn)';
RR = (R*1.2+sr+.05) - abs(linspace(-1,1,tn)*.04);
T = linspace(-lw,lw,tn) .* linspace(1,0,rn).^2';
ll = linspace(0,2,ln+1);

for a=ll(1:end-1) % Leaf positions
surface(RR.*cospi(T+a),RR.*sinpi(T+a)-sr,sinpi(R*.9)*lh.*ones(1,tn)-sh,'FaceColor',sc,'EdgeColor','none');
end

%% Configure Axes & Lighting
set(gca,'YDir','reverse','Projection','perspective','Visible','off','DataAspectRatio',[1 1 1])
light('Position',[1.7 1.7 4],'Color','w');
lighting gouraud
material([.8 .9 .2 2 .4])
view([-44 20]);

05/12/2026

Love this way to see how much the projection distorts the globe!

Are you closer to the North or South Pole?

credit: Atlasova