SMS scnews item created by Gareth White at Wed 22 Oct 2008 1617
Type: Seminar
Distribution: World
Expiry: 24 Oct 2008
Calendar1: 24 Oct 2008 1300-1400
CalLoc1: Carslaw 452
Auth: garethw@asti.maths.usyd.edu.au

SUMS Meeting: Reid -- Paradoxes and Dodgy Concepts

Hello everyone,

It’s been a while since we have had a SUMS talk. However we have not been
completely dormant, there was that SUMS Relay which was a great success
(especially for the team of high school students who won the event!).

This week we have a talk by our Vice President, on Paradoxes and Dodgy
Concepts. You may think this will be similar to the very first SUMS talk of
the year, but you would be mistaken. This talk will be a little more
controversial I think. The abstract:

I’ll be talking about a bunch of randomly chosen and comparitively
controversial (or at least, commonly misunderstood) concepts in
mathematics and science, such as the theory of relativity, the axiom
of choice, the un-uncountability of the real numbers, etc. I’m no
expert in these areas but I’ll at least do enough research so that I
can explain the basics. The focus will then be on what I find
interesting about them (or why I disagree with the majority). The
intention is more to start up discussions and challenge existing ways
of approaching problems than to simply present some facts and
anecdotes (although they’ll also be included). So, it’s basically an
opportunity for me to whinge about the things I don’t understand and
get told off by the much intelligenter audience.