Tomorrow, February 29, 2020 would be Gene Golub's 22nd birthday.... read more >>

I have always been fascinated by the names that are used to describe colors. There are dozens of web sites with lists of color names. I was surprised to discover that the shade of blue we use in MathWorks logo is almost the same as the one used by the United States Air Force Academy.... read more >>

I have learned a lot more about Kuramoto oscillators since I wrote my blog post three weeks ago. I am working with Indika Rajapakse at the University of Michigan and Stephen Smale at the University of California, Berkeley. They are interested in the Kuramoto model because they are studying the beating of human heart cells. At this point we have some interesting results and some unanswered questions.... read more >>

Fireflies on a summer evening, pacemaker cells, neurons in the brain, a flock of starlings in flight, pendulum clocks mounted on a common wall, bizarre chemical reactions, alternating currents in a power grid, oscillations in SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices). These are all examples of synchronized oscillators.... read more >>

(This is a reprint of the second ever Cleve's Corner from the Winter 1990 MathWorks Newsletter).... read more >>

We will have a two-part minisymposium on "Bohemian Matrices" at ICIAM2019, the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics in Valencia, Spain, July 15-19. This is an outline of my talk.... read more >>

This is a summary of my talk at the conference Celebrating the Centenary of James H. Wilkinson's Birth at the University of Manchester, May 29.... read more >>

Why are manhole covers round? It is so they won't fall through the hole they are intended to cover. They have the same diameter regardless of where it is measured. If the hole has a slightly smaller diameter, it is not possible to orient the cover so that it will fall through. A square or rectangular cover can be turned slightly and it will easily fit through the hole.... read more >>

In a comment following my post about half-precision arithmetic, "Raj C" asked how the parameters for IEEE Standard 754 floating point arithmetic were chosen. I replied that I didn't know but would try to find out. I called emeritus U. C. Berkeley Professor W. (Velvel) Kahan, who was the principle architect of 754. Here is what I learned.... read more >>

As the degree of an interpolating polynomial increases, does the polynomial converge to the underlying function? The short answer is maybe. I want to describe a visual tool to help you investigate this question yourself.... read more >>