11/19 Athenaeum at 1pm - Treasures of Three by Joyati Debnath

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 1:00 pm"Treasures of Three" by Joyati Debnath

Debnath is a WSU Professor of mathematics. She will discuss the following:
We count in ten’s (decimal system), computers count in two’s (binary system), but who counts in three’s (ternary system)? This presentation will focus on counting in threes – Treasures in Three. It has been found that the notion of counting in threes was already implicit in Hindu Vedas (1500 BC), making the idea to be very old. Thomas Fowler in 1840 constructed a wooden calculating ternary machine to ease his calculations as a treasurer. It just happens that in the numbering system, when the base 10 is too big and base 2 is too small, base 3 is just right. There are multiple uses of base-three systems. It is used in counting Islamic prayers, to denote fractional parts of an inning in baseball, and to understand the self-similar mathematical structures like Sierpinski Triangle or a Cantor set. In this presentation, there will be something interesting for students and faculty all across the campus.

The Athenaeum is located on the second floor of the WSU Library.