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Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.
Here's our coverage from the International Congress of Mathematicians 2022, including the Fields Medals and other prizes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the differences between us. Understanding these inequalities is crucial for this and future pandemics.
Now it's the turn of mathematicians to help to improve the communities of the future.
There have been accusations that the modelling projecting the course of the pandemic was too pessimistic. Are they justified?
We all know what turbulence is, but nobody understands it.
"Do you shave yourself? If not, come in and I'll shave you! I shave anyone who does not shave himself, and no one else."
"Does the barber shave himself? If he does, then he mustn't, because he doesn't shave men who shave themselves, but then he doesn't, so he must, because he shaves every man who doesn't shave himself... and so on. Both possibilities lead to a contradiction. "
A seemingly true paradox, but really just a naive question.
The parameters of the question are undefined. For instance; what defines a "shave"?
Is it considered a shave when you:
A. Remove all the hair from your face?
B. The initial cutting of hair that defines a shave?
Lets define this by way of common language:
I can start to shave and stop to answer the phone,
most likely my wife reminding me to shave,
so I answer, "I am not done shaving but I was shaving"
So by the aforementioned conversation, the "act of shaving" is the term by which we agree to acknowledge what consitutes a shave. There for by this "definition" the answer would have to be;
He would start to shave himself but never finish and from the point on only get some one else to shave him...