January 6

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Better Than News

Beyond Plausible

In Other Words

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician and physicist Thomas Fincke introduced the modern names of the trigonometric functions tangent and secant in his book Geometria rotundi (1583)?

• ... that objections to Georg Cantor's work were occasionally fierce: Henri Poincaré referred to Cantor's ideas as a "grave disease" infecting the discipline of mathematics, and Leopold Kronecker's public opposition and personal attacks included describing Cantor as a "scientific charlatan", a "renegade" and a "corrupter of youth"?

• ... that Jacob Bernoulli derived the first version of the law of large numbers in his work Ars Conjectandi?

Topic of the Day

Harry Nilsson