One of the great parts of my job is getting to meet all sorts of incredible people from all over the world. One of these, a math professor, is very close by to us, both geographically and professionally. Professor Jack Weiner is one of the most popular educators at the nearby University of Guelph. He is passionate about his work and it shows: he has won numerous awards, including the award for most "Popular Prof" in a national annual survey of Canadian Universities, for eight out of the last nine years.

I was recently forwarded a link to this Snopes article.

According to the urban legend described therein, text is still readable if all the letters in a word apart from the first and last are randomized. I quickly threw together a Maple worksheet, primarily using its flexible string manipulation tools.

We’re now at an inflection point in which symbolic technology will automate physical modeling and equation generation through tools like MapleSim. As a recent webinar hosted by Maplesoft and the Society of Automotive Engineers proved, engineers are fascinated by the application of the technology, and the technology itself.

• Voting patterns in Mexico and Florida.
• The size of files in your Maple 12 installation
• Stock trading volumes on the NYSE

What do all of these have in common? They, and other data sets drawn from the real world, often follow a non-intuitive pattern called Benford’s Law.

A colleague of mine recently mentioned something to me about an article that circulates every year during the holiday season, entitled “The Physics of Santa Claus”. This was news to me, so I ran a few Google searches to find out what she was talking about.

It seemed that some enterprising person had taken the time to go through and explain just what is involved in Santa’s Christmas Eve trip around the world delivering presents. How many households does he have to visit? How much do all those presents really weigh? How fast do the reindeer need to fly in order to get it all done in a finite amount of time? There is much speculation as to the origins of this piece; the general consensus seems to be that it began life published in SPY magazine in the early 1990s. Whatever the true story, it’s still an entertaining read in 2008.

I’ve taken some time to update the original with more current data – for instance, it seems the world’s population has grown a bit in the last 20 years. According to the Population Reference Bureau, the world population in 2008 was approximately 6,705 billion; 28% of these are children (defined as being under 15):

In fact, making some assumptions about the percentage of these children that celebrate Christmas and the number of children per household, it turns out that Santa needs to visit close to 200 million homes in one night.

We assume he distributes gifts from 5 pm to midnight, or for 7 hours. Due to the Earth's rotation, there is an overall time difference of 24 hours between different time zones, so we can therefore say that Santa has 31 hours to finish his work (assuming he logically travels east to west). Visiting 200 million homes in 31 hours means that Santa has to visit approximately 1586 homes per second:

This gives him about 1/1600th of a second to do everything at each home, such as parking his sleigh, looking for the right gifts, climbing down the sleigh and chimney, binge on snacks, fill the stockings, come up again and rush to his next stop!

For the complete details of his annual trip, visit the Applications Center where I’ve posted the Maple document in which I’ve recreated the Santa calculations. Happy Holidays!!

My wife will tell you that I am horrible at remembering important things like birthdays and sending Christmas cards on time … or at all. As we approach the end of another remarkable year, it’s always rewarding to reflect on the events of the year and take the time to thank all those who made the year so remarkable. So, in no particular order

And probably on your mind as well.

When there isn’t a hot news story about an election, a scandal or a disaster, it seems that China is the constant background music we all hear.  China’s incredible growth.  China’s incredible wealth.  China’s growing need for oil that will soon exceed world production capacity.  China as the manufacturer of everything.

I’m sure you’ve heard the same.

Two things are focusing my attention on India these days.

The first is something that I’m sure I share with most of you – the sad and terrifying news of recent terrorist attacks.  We all hope that these were acts of small groups and will not lead to wider conflict.

The second is that I am very pleased to be resuming a relationship with a very fine organization in India that I have known for 20 years.  Maplesoft recently announced that Cranes Software International will represent us in India.  I expect exciting things in the coming months and years.

Warning: this blog post contains strong language. Reader discretion is advised. Actually, it’s the posting in the Facebook group “Every time I walk into math class a little part of me dies” that contains the strong language. This group pulls almost 12,000 young students (mostly high school age) who share a common interest – the fear, loathing, and ultimately hatred of math.

Being inept at math is almost a badge of honor for many today. In a social gathering, even an adult one, it won’t be long until someone (typically articulate and educated) blurts out “I’m a complete zero when it comes to math” with some pride. Funny though … you don’t hear many shouting “I can’t read a single word!” with the same enthusiasm.

Come January, a group of Maple experts will be heading to the American capital, not for the presidential inauguration, but to attend the 2009 Joint Mathematics Meetings. This year’s event marks the 115^th annual meeting of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the 92^nd meeting of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA). 

Over the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough to spend time in Taiwan.  In my first visit to Taipei, I was astounded by the sheer scale of the Taipei 101 skyscraper.  At over 500m tall it dwarfed everything else in the skyline.

Given the proximity of many active fault lines, tall buildings in Taipei have a degree of earthquake protection engineered into them with a tuned mass damper .

I’ve always been fascinated with the relationships between math and music, since they are both fields in which I take a great interest. This week I’ve been delving into some of the history that links the two. For instance, the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (circa 569 - circa 475 BC) is probably best known for the Pythagorean Theorem. However, he also made significant contributions to music, the influences of which can still be seen today.

For the first time, Cybernet decided to coordinate two more major meetings with the TechnoForum – essentially creating a 2-day multiconference. In contrast to the Maplesoft-centric sessions of the Maple Techno Forum on Day 1, the second day was focused on industry problems and the technological and scientific solutions emerging from various sources.

A while back I posted an article on Maplesoft activities in Japan. As planned, last week, some colleagues and I made the trip to Japan and once again, came back with a bag full of stories and insights – technical, business, social, political – you can never spend a week in Japan and not be suitably impressed and surprised by the latest happenings.