mathematics

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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Buffon’s plaqueAfter being inspired by George Reese’s work with Buffon’s needle, then seeing the movie, Le Pacte des loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf), then Buffon’s statue in the Jardin des Plantes, I’ve kept an eye out for Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. He did amazing work in natural history, mathematics, biology, cosmology, translation, and essays. He also examned alleged specimens for the beast of Gévaudan, which provided the basis for the movie.

On Sunday we saw his house in Dijon (where he lived from 1717 to 1742), on naturally, rue Buffon.

From his Wikipedia entry you can follow links to Buffon’s needle.

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Reasoning Under Uncertainty

Student-created box plot

Student-created box plot

Reasoning Under Uncertainty was a project funded by the National Science Foundation under its EHR/Applications of Advanced Technology program during 1985-91. The project led to a variety a publications and presentations (e.g., Rosebery & Rubin, 2007; Rubin & Bruce, 1991). Andee Rubin and I were the PIs, but the project eventually involved many other colleagues at Bolt Beranek and Newman, MIT, and local schools in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area. Continue reading →

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Dissertation: The logical structure underlying temporal references in natural language

Bruce, B. C. (1971). The logical structure underlying temporal references in natural language. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, Computer Sciences Department. [Note: The archival file is very large; here’s the content in a smaller file size.]

Committee: Norman M. Martin (Co-Chair), Robert F. Simmons (Co-Chair), Michael Richter, Terrence W. Pratt

From the Introduction:

Temporal reference in natural language include tenses and other time relations, references to specific times, and a variety of phrases such as “present”, “later”, “when”, “how often”, and “never”. Their high frequency of occurrence reflects the importance of time to the users of natural language. Although the structure underlying temporal references may appear complicated, it is a working assumption of this thesis that a sound logical explanation of its characteristics can be made.

Continue reading →