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XuetangX

Life on Mathematics

Harbin Engineering University via XuetangX

Overview

“Mathematical genius” has always been enviable. For the vast majority of us, the way of thinking may,be more sensitive to the things around us. It is easier to understand mathematics in the objective figurative ways than in the usual abstract way. This is based on the fact that mathematics is an innate ability for anyone. When you are picked up from kindergarten, your mother gives you an apple, and your father gives you another one. You don't have to see the primary school teacher to learn “one plus one equals two”. Instead, you raise your left hand and right hand happily and say: “I have two apples!" Mathematics is a gift given to people by Heavens.

In fact, mathematics has many entrances and exits. Most people go in math like what that they are taught in school. Maybe your thinking is narrow in that direction. One thing this course hopes to do is to help you find the door into the realm of mathematics.

The course 《Life on Mathematics》 consists of twelve topics which is a “series”. Each topic starts with an example around us to explain mathematical concepts and principles in a simple way. Furthermore, through the visualization of the explanation, the course shows these mathematical principles more abundant and broad humanistic connotation. From the content, each topic contains the strong traces of life——

Syllabus

  • Chapter 1 How Long are Your Home Stairs? ——On Distance
    • Part 1 The Story of Staircase Length
    • Part 2 Can You Give A Formula by The Concept of Distance?
    • Part 3 Is The Length Which A Taxi Covers A Sort of Distance?
    • Part 4 The Difference between Confidants And Friends
    • Part 5 Mathematical Explanation of “Distance Produces Beauty”
  • Chapter 2 How to Prove The Instability of Standing on One Foot? ——On Stability
    • Part 1 Who Was Correct, Schwarzenegger or Horse?
    • Part 2 Why More Stable for Standing on 2 Feet Than 1 Foot?
    • Part 3 The False Metaphor of Domino Effect
    • Part 4 Mathematical Nature of Extreme Sports
  • Chapter 3 The Disappearance of Ceres ——On Data
    • Part 1 A story about lighthouse height
    • Part 2 The method of least square
    • Part 3 The Disappearance of Ceres
    • Part 4 The logic of approximate equality
  • Chapter 4 Can Marriage And Happiness Really Be Calculated? ——On Balance
    • Part 1 The Story about Game of Go
    • Part 2 Is “Elephant Opening” Conservative?
    • Part 3 The Wisdom of Algebra
  • Chapter 5 How Likely Are You to Meet With Mr. Right? ——On Yuanfen (Predestined Relationship)
    • Part 1 The Odds of Our Meeting
    • Part 2 The secret of the key
    • Part 3 The story of mathematical expectation
    • Part 4 The everlasting charm of go-between culture
    • Part 5 The mathematics of achieving the predestined relationship
  • Chapter 6 How Does Ballet Show The New Understanding of Human Form? ——On Ratio
    • Part 1 The confusion about the Wedding dress
    • Part 2 Why does everyone like pentagrams?
    • Part 3 Laozi’s doctrine and The beauty of Ratio
  • Chapter 7 How Is Chinese Characters Deconstructed by 4 Numbers? ——On Structure
    • Part 1 Conflict about paint
    • Part 2 The way to understand the vast space
    • Part 3 What kind of structural mystery is hidden in food?
  • Chapter 8 Trouble in Temperament ——On Uncertainty
    • Part 1 How do people produce scales?
    • Part 2 The story of Fermat’s Last Theorem
    • Part 3 Han Xin Counting Soldiers and Chinese Remainder Theorem
    • Part 4 Why can't you remember your mobile number?
  • Chapter 9 For 4-arithmetic Operations, Can Computers Miscalculate? ——On Error
    • Part 1 The awkward of buying shoes
    • Part 2 Liu Xiang's grievance as a Runner-up
    • Part 3 How a large numbers annihilating a small numbers
    • Part 4 Why the Grand Prix invite 11 judges?
    • Part 5 Digital characteristics of mistakes
    • Part 6 The origin of “You can’t catch a wolf without sacrificing your child.”
  • Chapter 10 Could Achilles Never Catch up with A Tortoise? ——On Limit
    • Part 1 The fear of Matthew
    • Part 2 Where does the thinking of a limit take us from the macro perspective
    • Part 3 Does the limits of various human sports exist
  • Chapter 11 The Feminine Intuition of Princess Dido ——On Optimum
    • Part 1 A story spread among the Phoenicians
    • Part 2 Can the functions we usually mention act as independent variables
    • Part 3 The extremum of functionals
    • Part 4 Is the curved roof just for beauty?
    • Part 5 The mathematical principle in the construction of Chinese characters
  • Chapter 12 How Did Dirichlet Make A Discontinuity with Continuity? ——On Continuity
    • Part 1 A story of the square table
    • Part 2 Does the continuity make a discontinuity
    • Part 3 The continuity all is about one point and a collective characteristic
    • Part 4 An awkward situation of the Loch Ness monster
  • Final Test

    Taught by

    Shen Jihong, Wang Shujuan, Wang Ligang, and Dai Yuntao

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