Session 1: Math in Narrative with Apostolos Doxiadis

Apostolos Doxiadis

Overview

We are pleased to have Apostolos Doxiadis join us for a seminar on math and narrative. Apostolos has spent a lifetime integrating his interests in math and the arts, especially the art of narrative. In his book, Logicomix, he artfully integrates mathematical concepts and images. In his session, he will talk about his ideas on math and narrative. Participants will have opportunity to ask questions during the session.

Here are highlights about Apostolos’ background from his web site:

- Apostolos Doxiadis was born in Brisbane, Australia, and grew up in Greece.

- Although interested in fiction and the arts from his youngest years, a sudden and totally unexpected love affair with mathematics led him to New York's Columbia University at the age of fifteen. He did graduate work in Applied Mathematics at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, working on mathematical models for the nervous system.

- Returning to Greece, his interests in writing and the theater returned. He is a published novelist. For example, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture (1992) is about a mathematician’s struggle to solve this problem as related by his nephew. In 2009, his book, Logicomix, was published to much accalom.

- Apostolos was instrumental in organizing the first international Mathematics and Narrative meeting, which took place on Mykonos, in 2005. A recent publication, Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative (2012) was based on papers delivered at the second meeting of that group in 2007.

Below are some resources that are connected with the topic of math and narrative. The first three are tied directly to Apostolis Doxiadis. The others are some examples we have found about math and narrative. In your blogs, please share your discoveries.

Reading, Viewing and Listening Materials

Herman/Doxiadis Interview

One Culture/Royal Society presentation

LOGICOMIX review

Cartoon Math

Pascal's Triangle and Prime Doodling

Diagram for Communication

Twitter Narratives & Math

Are Shakespeare's Plays Encoded in Pi?

The Story of Maths

Electron Blue 2

Who's Counting: Math in Narratives

Seminar

Tuesday, 16 October: Recorded Session HERE Introduction to VizMath: a MOOC and HERE
Thursday, 18 October: Live Session with Apostolos Doxiadis: Location: Blackboard.
the url for the link"
https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/launch/meeting.jnlp?sid=2012301&password=M.4C8485BF7571722B952F65B5776B2A

Time:8:00 p.m. Moscow; 5:00 p.m. London; 12 noon New York; 9:00 a.m. Los Angeles; 1:00 a.m. Thursday Beijing

Other Time Zones

Recording of 18 October session with Apostolos Doxiadis:

https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2012-10-18.0629.M.781C5F851C542973E43667095023AD.vcr&sid=2012301

You Tube video of recorded session with Apostolos Doxiadis

You Tube of Logicomix Video

Activities

A few simple activities for this week:

1. View the recordings and complete course readings for Introduction to VizMath and Math in Narrative

2. As an introductory week, this is a good opportunity to define how you will participate in the course. We encourage you to set up a blog (on a service such as wordpress.com or blogger. This course is different from what you've likely experienced in the past - it's open and distributed. It's important for you to define where you wish to begin forming (or extend an existing) digital identity.

3. Use the VizMath tag in anything you create. Our Twitter tag is: #VizMath ; for Diigo tag is VizMathMOOC

It is especially important to use the tags in Diigo and in Twitter. That is how we will recognize content related to this course. We will aggregate this content and display it in our newsletter. Yes your content will be displayed in the VizMathNewsPosts. That's how other people will find it.

If you are using a blog, Flickr, or a discussion group, share the RSS feed. We will offer a separate post on how to find your RSS feed if you don't know how. But if you know how, please tell us your feed address.

You can use the form here: Add your RSS feeds by adding a feed here

Submit your blog to gRSSreader so we can track and share your activity

[Outline] [Session 2]