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Strogatz Unravels the Complexities of Complex Numbers

"The story of [mathematicians’] struggle to find the ‘roots’ — the solutions — of increasingly complicated equations is one of the great epics in the history of human thought," Steven Strogatz wrote in this week's New York Times column, which covered the complexities of complex numbers and their utility.


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MAA Writing Awards
On this site you will find pdf copies of the articles that have won MAA journal writing awards over the years and short bios of the authors.

Go to MAA Writing Awards

Loci
Welcome to Loci, the online publication of MathDL. Loci is the continuation of three former MathDL publications: The Journal of Online Mathematics and its Applications (JOMA), Digital Classroom Resources (DCR), and Convergence.

Go to Loci

MathDL News

Until further notice, MAA Reviews and Classroom Capsules and Notes are accessible to everyone without any restriction. Now is a great time to see what those sites have to offer.

There is a new supplement in Loci: Supplement to 'Fermat's Spiral and the Line Between Yin and Yang' by Tom Leathrum. The applet supplements an article written by Taras Banakh, Oleg Verbitsky, and Yaroslav Vorobets that will appear in the American Mathematical Monthly. The supplement includes a relevant excerpt from the article.

Do you want to integrate 1/(2+cos(x))? Calculate the number of ways that 18 objects can be selected from a pool of 30? Find information about a specific second-order linear differential equation? Find, "What is the meaning of life?" And not pay for software? Then let Gizem Karaali and Bruce Yoshiwara introduce you to Wolfram|Alpha in their new Loci article, Life After Wolfram|Alpha: What You (and Your Students) Need to Know. (The answer to the question about the meaning of life is given by Wolfram|Alpha to be 42, from A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.)

Check out the use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) in the new article in Loci: Resources, Mathematics Animations with SVG by Samuel Dagan. As MathML is to mathematical text, SVG is to mathematical graphics. Dagan illustrates several calculus-level concepts with SVG animated graphics.

Math Resources of Halifax has upgraded the MathDL content management system to enable digital object identifiers (DOIs) that will provide a permanent link to articles regardless of where they might be located, searches by MSC 2010 classifications, and sample bibliographic entries at the bottom of the first page of articles. These features will be implemented for all Loci articles in the near future.

The 2010 Chauvenet Prize winning paper, e: The Master of All by Brian J. McCartin is available in MAA Writing Awards.

Lang Moore
Executive Editor of MathDL
February 20, 2010

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