Keith Briggs (mathematician)

Last updated

Keith Briggs is a mathematician notable for several world-record achievements in the field of computational mathematics:

Contents

An article about him was in i-squared Magazine, Issue 6 (Winter 2008/9). [2]

Briggs has Erdős number equal to two, obtained by his joint authorship of two papers with George Szekeres. One of these papers was the last published by Szekeres before his death, and Szekeres was Erdős' first co-author. [3]

Local history in Suffolk

He also studies the etymology of place-names, and on Middle English etymology, phonology, and semantics (especially in East Anglia), as evidenced by onomastic data.

Selected texts


Related Research Articles

The logistic map is a polynomial mapping of degree 2, often referred to as an archetypal example of how complex, chaotic behaviour can arise from very simple nonlinear dynamical equations. The map, initially utilized by Edward Lorenz in the 1960s to showcase irregular solutions, was popularized in a 1976 paper by the biologist Robert May, in part as a discrete-time demographic model analogous to the logistic equation written down by Pierre François Verhulst. Mathematically, the logistic map is written

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numerical analysis</span> Study of algorithms using numerical approximation

Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation for the problems of mathematical analysis. It is the study of numerical methods that attempt to find approximate solutions of problems rather than the exact ones. Numerical analysis finds application in all fields of engineering and the physical sciences, and in the 21st century also the life and social sciences, medicine, business and even the arts. Current growth in computing power has enabled the use of more complex numerical analysis, providing detailed and realistic mathematical models in science and engineering. Examples of numerical analysis include: ordinary differential equations as found in celestial mechanics, numerical linear algebra in data analysis, and stochastic differential equations and Markov chains for simulating living cells in medicine and biology.

The number π is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14159. The number π appears in many formulae across mathematics and physics. It is an irrational number, meaning that it cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers, although fractions such as are commonly used to approximate it. Consequently, its decimal representation never ends, nor enters a permanently repeating pattern. It is a transcendental number, meaning that it cannot be a solution of an equation involving only finite sums, products, powers, and integers. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge. The decimal digits of π appear to be randomly distributed, but no proof of this conjecture has been found.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feigenbaum constants</span> Mathematical constants related to chaotic behavior

In mathematics, specifically bifurcation theory, the Feigenbaum constants are two mathematical constants which both express ratios in a bifurcation diagram for a non-linear map. They are named after the physicist Mitchell J. Feigenbaum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numerical integration</span> Methods of calculating definite integrals

In analysis, numerical integration comprises a broad family of algorithms for calculating the numerical value of a definite integral. The term numerical quadrature is more or less a synonym for "numerical integration", especially as applied to one-dimensional integrals. Some authors refer to numerical integration over more than one dimension as cubature; others take "quadrature" to include higher-dimensional integration.

A powerful number is a positive integer m such that for every prime number p dividing m, p2 also divides m. Equivalently, a powerful number is the product of a square and a cube, that is, a number m of the form m = a2b3, where a and b are positive integers. Powerful numbers are also known as squareful, square-full, or 2-full. Paul Erdős and George Szekeres studied such numbers and Solomon W. Golomb named such numbers powerful.

John Lewis Selfridge, was an American mathematician who contributed to the fields of analytic number theory, computational number theory, and combinatorics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terence Tao</span> Australian–American mathematician (born 1975)

Terence Chi-Shen Tao is an Australian mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he holds the James and Carol Collins chair. His research includes topics in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, algebraic combinatorics, arithmetic combinatorics, geometric combinatorics, probability theory, compressed sensing and analytic number theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Happy ending problem</span>

In mathematics, the "happy ending problem" is the following statement:

A computer-assisted proof is a mathematical proof that has been at least partially generated by computer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erdős–Szekeres theorem</span> Sufficiently long sequences of numbers have long monotonic subsequences

In mathematics, the Erdős–Szekeres theorem asserts that, given r, s, any sequence of distinct real numbers with length at least (r − 1)(s − 1) + 1 contains a monotonically increasing subsequence of length ror a monotonically decreasing subsequence of length s. The proof appeared in the same 1935 paper that mentions the Happy Ending problem.

In the study of dynamical systems the term Feigenbaum function has been used to describe two different functions introduced by the physicist Mitchell Feigenbaum:

This is a timeline of pure and applied mathematics history. It is divided here into three stages, corresponding to stages in the development of mathematical notation: a "rhetorical" stage in which calculations are described purely by words, a "syncopated" stage in which quantities and common algebraic operations are beginning to be represented by symbolic abbreviations, and finally a "symbolic" stage, in which comprehensive notational systems for formulas are the norm.

In differential algebra, Picard–Vessiot theory is the study of the differential field extension generated by the solutions of a linear differential equation, using the differential Galois group of the field extension. A major goal is to describe when the differential equation can be solved by quadratures in terms of properties of the differential Galois group. The theory was initiated by Émile Picard and Ernest Vessiot from about 1883 to 1904.

A mathematical constant is a key number whose value is fixed by an unambiguous definition, often referred to by a special symbol, or by mathematicians' names to facilitate using it across multiple mathematical problems. Constants arise in many areas of mathematics, with constants such as e and π occurring in such diverse contexts as geometry, number theory, statistics, and calculus.

References