An amateur’s outlook on computation and mathematics

Alfonso’s universe

by Brian Hayes

Published 30 September 2008

Tardy announcement: I’ll be giving a talk tomorrow at Harvard. Details. If you’re in the neighborhood, please look in.

Update: Harvard has posted video of the talk; please have a look, if you’re interested, and you’re equipped to play RealMedia files. I’m not equipped, so I haven’t seen it myself. But I’m sure it’s wonderful (thanks to the AV expertise of Bill Countie and Geoff Maness).

Slides are here (PDF), though they won’t make much sense without the narration.

Responses from readers:

  • A comment from Fëanor, 30 September 2008 at 4:38 pm

    Will you be making your talk (or notes) available online? I’m sure it would be of much interest to all your readers.

  • A comment from brian, 2 October 2008 at 8:45 am

    Film at eleven. The talk was taped, and I’ll post a note here when the video is available.

  • A comment from Jakob, 13 October 2008 at 4:28 am

    Might there be basis for a future American Scientist column ?

  • A comment from brian, 13 October 2008 at 8:15 am

    @Jakob: Maybe but not immediately. I should mention that I’ve written on related themes in the past:

    Computing Science: The Way the Ball Bounces. American Scientist, Vol. 84, No. 4, July-August 1996, pages 331-335. PDF

    Computing Science: Computational Creationism. American Scientist, Vol. 87, No. 5, September-October 1999, pages 392-396. HTML

    Debugging the Universe. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 42, No. 2, February 2003, pages 277-295. PDF preprint

Please note: The bit-player website is no longer equipped to accept and publish comments from readers, but the author is still eager to hear from you. Send comments, criticism, compliments, or corrections to brian@bit-player.org.

Tags for this article: uncategorized.

Publication history

First publication: 30 September 2008

Converted to Eleventy framework: 22 April 2025

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