I'm currently in the third year of a four year course (MSci) in mathematics at Lancaster university. I'm also hoping to gain a second degree at that most highly respected institution UBS.
If you don't think mathematicians work hard enough, take a look at this.
Langton's Ant: a TI83 program
This is a program I wrote for my TI83 calculator after seeing Ian Stewart demonstrate this "ant", when he gave the Royal Institution Christmas lectures one year. It takes a long time to "do its stuff" with the low processor speed, so you might want to go and do something else while it's running! There's more info about Langton's ant at the bottom of this page.
That's about it for my stuff, so here's what other people have been up to:
Nick's Mathematical Puzzles
A collection of thought-provoking (but understandable) problems, very nicely presented, and updated regularly by the webmaster Nick Hobson.
Front for the Mathematics ArXiv
If you have trouble pronouncing the name of this page, think of the X as the greek letter ! This site contains a large collection of serious maths papers, in various formats (PDF, PS, etc.). All of the main areas of maths seem to be covered (although some expert in abstract granny-knot theory is bound to correct me on this)
MAT007 A page of quite funny maths miscellany from Canada.
WWW interactive maths server
A very useful website, which, among other things, allows you to create GIF
animations of 3D plots (for functions of two variables, like z=x2-y2
).
The site also boasts a program which will factorise expressions and numbers,
and also an ODE solver.
The Integrator
Exactly... You type in a function, it gives you its integral.
Langton's ant applet
Langton's ant is what is known as a "cellular automaton" which "lives" on a board of pixels. It moves around in a way determined by whether the pixels are on or off.
If you run the ant for long enough, an incredible thing happens (I'll let you see for yourself what it is!). This Java applet runs the "ant algorithm", and allows you to change the initial conditions. Hours of fun guaranteed! To see a TI83 program for Langton's ant, click here.
! This site contains a large collection of serious maths papers, in various formats (PDF, PS, etc.). All of the main areas of maths seem to be covered (although some expert in abstract granny-knot theory is bound to correct me on this)
