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How Did We Get Here? The Tangled History of the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Stephen Wolfram

But, first and foremost, the story of the Second Law is the story of a great intellectual achievement of the mid-19th century. But in other ways it’s also a cautionary tale, of how the forces of “conventional wisdom” can blind people to unanswered questions and—over a surprisingly long time—inhibit the development of new ideas.

Energy 88
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Launching Version 13.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica ??????

Stephen Wolfram

And for the past four years I’ve been sharing the “behind the scenes” of how it’s achieved—by livestreaming our Wolfram Language design review meetings. You can give Threaded as an argument to any listable function, not just Plus and Times : &#10005. And that’s finally been achieved in Version 13.1. In designing Version 13.1

Calculus 114
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Students Are Busy but Rarely Thinking, Researcher Argues. Do His Teaching Strategies Work Better?

ED Surge

That’s the argument of Peter Liljedahl, a professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, who has spent years researching what works in teaching. The most problematic strategy that many students try instead, he argues, is what he calls “mimicking,” which he has especially found in the math classes he studies.

Research 354
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Don’t Give Up on Algebra: Let’s Shift the Focus to Instruction

National Science Foundation

Similarly, reformers have focused on the timing of the course, aiming to enroll students as early as possible to open pathways to calculus and to diversify access to higher level mathematics. Yet we have not seen equal advances in achievement (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). 2017; Stein et al., 2019, October).

Algebra 76
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LLM Tech and a Lot More: Version 13.3 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica

Stephen Wolfram

Line, Surface and Contour Integration “Find the integral of the function ” is a typical core thing one wants to do in calculus. And in Mathematica and the Wolfram Language that’s achieved with Integrate. we’ve finally finished doing the math and creating the algorithms to introduce AppellF2 , AppellF3 and AppellF4.

Computer 118
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The Physicalization of Metamathematics and Its Implications for the Foundations of Mathematics

Stephen Wolfram

How Math Relates to Humans. And in what follows we’ll see the great power that arises from using this to combine the achievements and intuitions of physics and mathematics—and how this lets us think about new “general laws of mathematics”, and view the ultimate foundations of mathematics in a different light. 27 Invented or Discovered?

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Remembering the Improbable Life of Ed Fredkin (1934–2023) and His World of Ideas and Stories

Stephen Wolfram

It didn’t help that his knowledge of physics was at best spotty (and, for example, I don’t think he ever really learned calculus). As I was writing this piece, I decided to look up more about Roland Silver—who I found out had been a college roommate of Marvin Minsky’s at Harvard, and had had a long career in math, etc.