December 14th, 2004

Scientists come one step closer to the perfect poppy-seed bagel

It’s easy to distribute points evenly across a flat surface, but doing so over a curved surface is a much more complicated problem. Even spheres are hard. NPR’s Scott Simon interviews mathematician Ed Saff who with colleague Doug Hardin has developed a new method of attacking this complex problem. Press release from Vanderbilt University

. You can also download the paper (in PDF form) from Dr. Saff’s home page, if you think you’re smart enough to understand it. (Don’t ask me for help. I have two degrees in mathematics and was in over my head by halfway through page 2. I couldn’t even make it out of the Introduction.)

Author

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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