I really like this photo sent in by reader Barry. The possibilities are endless!
Catematics
March 30, 2015 • 2:45 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I didn’t know that WEIT offered a mail order moggie service.
🙂
Great illustration of the set theorectic development of the integers:
N + 1 = N U {N}
Where was this picture when I was struggling with math?
Yes. Cats are so much easier to comprehend than are little colored spots.
Cats comprehensible??? I love them, but comprehensible is not the first descriptor that comes to mind🐱
Trudat. Perhaps “visualize” or “relate-to” might be more apt. Good catch!
That is awesome! And kudos to Barry for writing the equation on the box and getting the photo taken before one of them jumped out! 🐈🐈🐈
No, I think Barry just called my attention to this picture; I don’t think he took it.
Shrödinger cats? A superposition of 9 quantum states?
sub
Schrõdinger would’ve loved this …
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If the boxes were closed though he’d no longer be sure of either the Iimits of the problem space nor that the cats are alive (or dead) (or both) (if any).
I am trying to come up with some more math jokes. Lets see…
√-1 2^3 ∑ ∏ and it was delicious!
purrrfect!
If one cat is male and the other female, perhaps the photographer needs to lay in a lifetime supply of boxes!
for some reason it just looks pretty normal.
It’s kind of fractal, isn’t it?
Yup, recursive
HASSLEIN (Eric Braeden): Now here’s a painting of a landscape. Now the artist who painted that picture says, “Something is missing. What is it? It is I myself who was a part of the landscape I painted.” So he mentally takes a step backward — or “regresses” — and paints a picture of the artist painting a picture of the landscape. And still something is missing. And that something is still his real self painting the second picture. So he “regresses” further and paints a third, a picture of the artlst painting a picture of the artist painting a picture of the landscape. And because something is still mlssing, he paints a fourth and a fifth… until he paints a picture of the artist painting a picture of the artist painting a picture of the artist painting a picture of the artist painting a landscape.
BONDS (Bill Bonds): So infinite regression, then, is—
HASSLEIN: It is the moment when our artist has regressed to the point of infinity, and himself becomes part of the landscape he painted and is both the observer and the observed.
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Eric Braeden as in Victor Newman?
Yes! This is from _Escape from the Planet of the Apes_ (1971)
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Thanks, I needed this:-)
Don’t you mean repurrsive? 😉
+1 That pun is the cat’s meow!
Yup – repurrsive;-)
Very cute. But makes me a little queasy, thinking of Schrodinger’s cat.
Maru’s Law of Boxes
I heard a historian named Kruse on NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ show today
He has written a book titled ‘In God We Trust’ coming out in April.
In it he clearly shows how big business enlisted preachers to battle organized labor by spreading the idea unions were ungodly.
And spread the idea that America is a Christian country, which was not prevalent. The unholy alliance, if I may, has directly impacted our society for the worse.
The equation is just a little TOO purrfect … I have a feeling it was photoshopped in. No matter, an intriguing concept with some cute and well-behaved moggies …
I think it looks ok. Cat overlords sit in their boxes. They stare up that their humans, who dutifully take their picture & post on the internet.
The universe is in balance. Purrrr….
Maybe he just glued their feet to the bottom of the box…
You are correct. It is definitely not actually printed on the box.
Box theory. That works, if we remember that a proper subbox is not a box unto itself. (So there is no universal box. My ceiling cat view of the universe is saved!)
And here I thought catematics was “_one_ cat, _many_ servants, and _all_ the food”!
Speaking of cats in boxes in boxes, here are ants in boxes in boxes – in space. (Yes, the experiment used a series of boxes, and a ground comparison, besides ISS being “a box”.) They do well!
Okay, it is off topic, but it is biology. And space. How can I resist? Hope I don’t break Da Roolz…
“Ants carried to the International Space Station were still able to use teamwork to search new areas, despite falling off the walls of their containers for up to eight seconds at a time.
Their “collective search” was hampered but still took place, biologists said.
The insects also showed an impressive knack for regaining their footing after taking a zero-g tumble.”
“As it turned out, although they had a little difficulty maintaining contact as they crawled, once adrift the ants showed a “remarkable ability” to get their six feet back on solid ground.
About 10% of the ants at any time were just floating around
“Sometimes they would grab onto another ant and climb back down… And sometimes, they somehow managed to just flatten themselves back onto the surface. I think the biomechanics of that are interesting,” Prof Gordon said.”
[ http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32115413 ]
“About 10% of the ants at any time were just floating around”
That’s me.
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Figured we’d hear from you🐜
Very cool ant experiment. Wish Woody Allen could have incorporated it into his movie, Antz;-)
This is curious. Casual observation suggests that ants don’t fall off things in a gravitational field (i.e. my kitchen) nearly that often. Could it be that the lack of gravity disorients them?
Can a cat be expressed as a continued fraction? Is the expansion finite? Is it unique?
http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/150330_a18915-600.jpg
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Caption: “About your cat, Mr. Schrödinger—I have good news and bad news.”
(oops!)