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njwildberger.com
| | jmanton.wordpress.com
6.8 parsecs away

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| | The following hints atwhy the quintic equation cannot be solved using radicals. It follows the approach in the first part of Ian Stewart's book "Galois Theory". If time permits, a future post will summarise the approach in V. B. Alekseev's book "Abel's Theorem in Problems and Solutions". Another candidate is Klein's book "Lectures on the...
| | micromath.wordpress.com
4.7 parsecs away

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| | Continuing the theme of alternative approaches to teaching calculus, I take the liberty of posting a letter sent by Donald Knuth to to the Notices of the American Mathematical Society in March, 1998 (TeX file). Professor Anthony W. Knapp P O Box 333 East Setauket, NY 11733 Dear editor, I am pleased to see so...
| | www.jeremykun.com
5.7 parsecs away

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| | Finding solutions to systems of polynomial equations is one of the oldest and deepest problems in all of mathematics. This is broadly the domain of algebraic geometry, and mathematicians wield some of the most sophisticated and abstract tools available to attack these problems. The elliptic curve straddles the elementary and advanced mathematical worlds in an interesting way. On one hand, it's easy to describe in elementary terms: it's the set of solutions to a cubic function of two variables.
| | austinmorlan.com
27.2 parsecs away

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| It took me longer than necessary to understand how a rotation transform matrix rotates a vector through three-dimensional space. Not because it's a difficult concept but because it is often poorly explained in textbooks. Even the most explanatory book might derive the matrix for a rotation around one axis (e.g., x) but then present the other two matrices without showing their derivation. I'll explain my own understanding of their derivation in hopes that it will enlighten others that didn't catch on right away.