Relatively Prime: Stories from the Mathematical Domain

Sadly Samuel did not make it to the semi-final round of The Aperiodical's Big Internet Math Off, but lucky for y'all in a fit of profound arrogance, as well as trying to deal with some potential scheduling issues which could have accompanied victory, they had already made all of their entries. Instead of letting them languish in the dust bin of mathematical communication history Samuel has decided...

Sadly Samuel did not make it to the second round of The Aperiodical's Big Internet Math Off, but lucky for y'all in a fit of profound arrogance, as well as trying to deal with some potential scheduling issues which could have accompanied victory, they had already made all of their entries. Instead of letting them languish in the dust bin of mathematical communication history Samuel has decided to...

It is time for the first round of the 1st ever Aperiodical.com Big Internet Math Off! In the first round Samuel is facing off against Paul Taylor, and they need y'all's help to win. Head over to the match page and vote for Samuel so they can tell y'all about what an Irish bridge, graffiti, and the letters i, j, and k have to do with getting to the moon in the second round. For their first round en...

On this month's episode of Relatively Prime we are excited to bring to you the story of Girls Talk Math. Girls Talk Math is a 2 week mathematics camp for high school women, as well as a podcast made by the campers about women from the history of mathematics. Samuel spoke with the founders Francesca Bernardi and Katrina Morgan about where the idea came from, why they decided to include podcasting a...

This month's Relatively Prime is all about classification. Samuel is joined by Fabian Müller of zbMath for a discussion of the Mathematics Subject Classification, the benefit of using a hierarchical scheme to organize mathematics, and the work Fabian is doing to help revise MSC as a part of MSC 2020. This is a really important work which effects your ability to search and find the mathematical wor...

In this chapter of Diegetic Plots on Relatively Prime Larry Lesser shares the poem "The M Word" and there is a very unfortunate customer service call at Kroneckea. Many thanks must go to Bree Prehn for no particular reason for this episode. Don't forget to support Relatively Prime on Patreon and help Samuel survive the month! Music Jahzzar Alive Encedalus Freaks

On this episode so Relatively Prime Samuel talks with former office mate at UNLV Cody Palmer. When this conversation was recorded Cody was a PhD student at the University of Montana and has since moved on to become a Postdoctoral Research Scientist at the Institute for Disease Modeling. Samuel and Cody talk about the research Cody did into Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever and how the number of relapses...

Samuel has been feeling a bit nostalgic recently and was thinking about an old show we can almost guarantee you have never heard of, called Science Sparring Society. It was all based around this idea that from a Frank Swain tweet to make a podcast that told the stories of fights from the history of science. It was so much fun making this show, and Samuel was always sad that more people did not get...

We are happy to bring to you a special holiday episode of Relatively Prime during this festive period. Samuel is joined by old pals Katie, Peter, and Christian from the Aperiodical for an often funny, sometimes serious, and always entertaining conversation about the phenomenon of formulas for "The Perfect X" which are often seen in newspapers, especially around the holidays. Some of the examples d...

It is that time of year where you, and everyone else, is coughing and sniffling and sneezing and generally getting gross germs all over the place. That is why for this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel Hansen speaks with Benjamin Morin about infectious disease modeling and the best mitigation strategies those models indicate to deal with disease while minimizing cost, both for individuals and for...

Sure DNA is important, some might even claim it is absolutely integral to life itself, but does it contain any interesting math? Samuel is joined by UC-Davis Professor of Mathematics, Microbiology, and Molecular Genetics Mariel Vazquez for a discussion proves conclusively that mathematically DNA is fascinating. They talk about the topology of DNA, how knot theory can help us understand the problem...

Have you ever wondered what mathematicans' favorite theorems were? How about what food or music pairs perfectly with those theorems? Well whether your answer to those questions was yes or no or what are you talking about there is a new mathematics podcast on the scene you need to check out called My Favorite Theorem. My Favorite Theorem is the brain child of Kevin Knudson and Evelyn Lamb. You may...

Mathematics has been showing up in the news a lot more than usual lately. It has shown up in Slate, The New York Times, and The New Yorker and each time it has been accompanied by one other word, gerrymandering. While Relatively Prime has covered gerrymandering once before in the season 2 episode Mathematistan(a story we just rereleased as an encore presentation in the feed so y'all can get a refr...

Gerrymandering - the dividing of a state, county, etc., into election districts so as to give one political party a majority in many districts while concentrating the voting strength of the other party into as few districts as possible. Few aspects of politics are as clearly open to mathematical analysis as gerrymandering. Just looking at district maps seems to scream for geometric analysis, and t...

On this episode of Relatively Prime is the other panel Samuel hosted at the 2017 Joint Mathematics Meetings in Atlanta. This panel was called Outside the Equation and focused on mathematical communication outside of the typical, i.e. writing and lecture. The panel consisted of three Relatively Prime guests you already know and love: Tim Chartier, the mathematical mime, Anna Haensch, the co-host of...

Mathematics is not always the easiest thing to talk or write about, especially when the audience is not other mathematicians. This doesn't mean talking about math is impossible though, just that it takes some experience and some maybe some tricks. Of course that leaves a very clear question:  What are these tricks and how can I get this experience? In order to answer just this question Samuel gath...

There are stories all the time about race and policing in the United States. They do not typically focus on search rates of traffic stops, but that is a mistake we are not going to make. On this episode of Relatively Prime Samuel talks to Lily Khadjavi of Loyola Marymount University about the relationship between race and searches during traffic stops in Los Angeles. It is not pretty, but it is fa...

Cancer is a truly terrible disease. We all know it too, in fact it is very likely not a person reading this right now who has not had their own lives or the lives of their nearest and dearest affected by it. This includes your host Samuel. This is one reason Samuel was so interested in hearing to the two brilliant mathematicians you will be hearing from today talk about the work they have been doi...

  Sorry for the late episode this month, but your intrepid host and producer Samuel Hansen had to go and get himself concussed at his day job. This means he was not able to put together the episode he was planning on releasing, not to worry though he has some tricks up his sleeve. As you may know March 2017 is the month of #TryPod , where podcasts from all over are banding together to convince the...

  We live in a culture obsessed with the Origin Story, and not without reason. There is very rarely a story more fascinating than the one which tells us why it is people do what they do. So, for the first ever live episode of Relatively Prime we present to you the mathematical origin stories of Lily Khadjavi and Robert Schneider . The episode was recorded live at the 2017 Joint Mathematics Me...

We are right in the middle of that time every four years when the United States of America focuses very intently on the government, the whole government and not just the elected officials. Right now there are confirmation hearings happening, the executive branch is going through the final steps of transition, and a bunch of fresh congress people are settling into their new roles. This period is al...

Lottery Daze Welcome to the new season of Relatively Prime! There will be a few changes for the new season, primarily each episode will feature only a single story, but to make up for that episodes will be coming out monthly, starting with this one which features the story of how Sharif Ibrahim developed the lottery which was used to award licenses for the retail sale of cannabis in Washington Sta...

Diegetic Plots: Chapter Two This is the final episode of the 2nd season of Relatively Prime. It is also the second chapter of the ongoing series Diegetic Plots. Which means we will once again be exploring the intersection of mathematics and the humanities. This time by exploring what happens when haiku is used to procrastinate from writing a dissertation, how exactly theorems get born, all the pos...

f(θ)=1-sin(θ) If you ever want to conduct a quick social experiment on the status of mathematics in the world just get yourself a dating profile and mention on it that you are a mathematician. The messages you get will be quite illuminating: “I hate to break it to you, but while I appreciate math for its logic and beauty, I don’t think I’ll ever like it. lol TOO many formulas.” “I got up to AP Cal...

Principia Metropolica Your host Samuel Hansen loves cities. Small Cities, Dense Cities, New Cities, Twin Cities, Reborn Cities, he doesn’t care what type of city cities. He loves them all. This of course made it inevitable Samuel would at some point become interested in the intersection of cities and mathematics, and once he became interested in that intersection it became inevitable he would have...