Math lovers widely celebrate March 14 as Pi Day. Written as 3/14, the date matches the first three digits of pi—the constant ratio between a circle’s circumference and its diameter. One can go even further on that day, celebrating by the minute (3/14, 1:59) or the second (3/14, 1:59:26) to […]
Tag: History
Anti-Semitism: A Brief History
Disclaimer: This is a huge issue that contains sensitive content. To be frank, I cannot give this issue justice. Antisemitism did not start or end with the Middle East or Nazi Germany, it has been around for millennia. I hope and pray this article will provoke some really good discussion. […]
Fermat’s Last Theorem
In June of 1993, the British mathematician Andrew Wiles (b. 1953) delivered a series of lectures on “Modular Forms, Elliptic Curves, and Galois Representations.” Though the audience was not large—the topic required a large amount of background knowledge—it had grown beyond expectations. It was rumored that Wiles would announce something […]
Forgotten Algebra of the Babylonians
The trilingual Rosetta stone is justly famous for enabling the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. But its story is far from unique to the 19th century. Hundreds of thousands of clay tablets, written with cuneiform scripts in languages such as Hittite and Persian, also became readable for the first time in […]
China: The Land of the Rising Dragon?
As many readers of clay have likely witnessed, the Asian country of China has become one of the most important countries of the past decade. From the spy balloon incident early last year, to the continued threats of an invasion of Taiwan, the country has gained significant notoriety. Over the […]