Category: Popular Culture

Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 211): Knuckle Puck

Let L(x) be the statement “x lies to me,” and let P be the set of all people. Translate the logical statement

\forall x \in P(L(x)).

This matches a line from the song (and the title of the song) “Everyone Lies to Me” by Knuckle Puck.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 210): Alan Walker, Sabrina Carpenter & Farruko

Let S(x) be the statement “x can keep me safe,” and let P be the set of all people. Translate the logical statement

S(I) \land \forall x \in P(x \ne I \Rightarrow \lnot S(x)).

This matches a line from the song “On My Way.”

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 209): The Office

Let p be the statement “I am superstitious,” and let q be the statement “I am a little stitious.” Translate the logical statement

\lnot p \land q.

This matches a quote from the popular TV show “The Office.”

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 208): Masashi Kishimoto

Let R(t) be the statement “I run away at time t,” let G(t) be the statement “I go make on my word at time t,” and let T be the set of all times. Translate the logical statement

\forall t \in T (\lnot R(t) \land \lnot G(t)).

This matches a quote from the main character Naruto in Masashi Kishimoto’s anime (also named Naruto). 

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 207): Patrick Rothfuss

Let p be the statement “You tell a story the right way,” and let q be the statement “You are a bit of a liar.” Translate the logical statement

p \Rightarrow q.

This matches a line from the novel “Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss: “You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/155428-you-have-to-be-a-bit-of-a-liar-to

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.

Adding by a Form of 0: Index

I’m doing something that I should have done a long time ago: collecting a series of posts into one single post. The following links comprised my series on adding by a form of 0 (analogous to multiplying by a form of 1).

Part 1: Introduction.

Part 2: The Product and Quotient Rules from calculus.

Part 3: A formal mathematical proof from discrete mathematics regarding equality of sets.

Part 4: Further thoughts on adding by a form of 0 in the above proof.

How mathematicians are trying to make NFL schedules fairer

ESPN had a nice article about applied mathematicians at the University of Buffalo who are working with the NFL to create fairer schedules. A few quotes:

“This is a field I’ve worked in for 46 years, including 43 as a professor,” Karwan said by phone last week. “I’ve worked on very difficult problems that take more than 12 hours on the supercomputer to solve. And this is by far the hardest any of us have ever seen.”

And:

In developing the schedule, NFL assigns “penalty points” to outcomes such as three-game road trips, games between teams with disparate rest, and road trips following a Monday night road game. In their final proof of concept in 2017 before receiving the grant, Karwan and Steever took the 2016 schedule and lowered the penalty total by 20 percent…

The first step is based in both math and reality. Before creating the schedule, the NFL identifies a small number of games — usually between 40 and 50 — to lock in. The league refers to this as “seeding.” It helps accommodate expectations from television partners for key games in certain time slots, as well as about 200 annual requests from owners who prefer their stadiums not be used in a given week because of concerts, baseball games, marathons and other potential complications…

At that point, the NFL asks its computers to run schedule simulations until it finds one that has an acceptable penalty total. Usually that means juggling the 40 to 50 pre-seeded games. Karwan and Steever believe the key to improving the schedule is to better choose those pre-seeded games, allowing the computer to see stronger schedules that would otherwise be blocked by the initial choices through a process known as integer programming.

Not surprisingly, this research was publicized by the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, an annual conference dedicated to the integration (insert rim shot) of mathematics and sports.

Predicate Logic and Popular Culture (Part 206): Jack Johnson

Let H be the set of all things, let T be the set of all times, let G(x) be the proposition “x is good,” and let R(x,t) be the proposition “x remains at time t.” Translate the logical statement

\forall x \in H(G(x) \Longrightarrow \forall t \in T(R(x,t))).

This matches a line from “Mudfootball” by Jack Johnson.

Context: Part of the discrete mathematics course includes an introduction to predicate and propositional logic for our math majors. As you can probably guess from their names, students tend to think these concepts are dry and uninteresting even though they’re very important for their development as math majors.

In an effort to making these topics more appealing, I spent a few days mining the depths of popular culture in a (likely futile) attempt to make these ideas more interesting to my students. In this series, I’d like to share what I found. Naturally, the sources that I found have varying levels of complexity, which is appropriate for students who are first learning prepositional and predicate logic.

When I actually presented these in class, I either presented the logical statement and had my class guess the statement in actual English, or I gave my students the famous quote and them translate it into predicate logic. However, for the purposes of this series, I’ll just present the statement in predicate logic first.