The Great Ganesha

When those Japanese get fixated on a fad, they get fixated on a fad even if it’s as mundane as the eleven-times-table. In today’s NYT:
Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, [...]

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This is not new, but the NYT ran an article on outsourcing tutoring (in math, amongst other subjects) to India. This is part of the “second wave” of outsourcing:
The first wave of slicing up services work and sending it abroad has been all about business operations. Computer programming, call centers, product design and back-office jobs [...]

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So it looks like the theory that calculus in India predated Newton’s and Liebnitz’s calculus is back in the news again. I blogged about it in a series of three posts some time back, and it’s good to see that it’s getting some traction. I seriously doubt it will enter the mainstream any time soon, [...]

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A recent article in the BBC brought to light something interesting. For about 700-800 years, starting in the first or second century BC, the Indians were sending pepper and other spices to the Romans from Muziris, a seaport located in Kerala. The spices would make their way to Egypt, from where they would then be [...]

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No, I still have yet to receive the book I mentioned below. But before I did that I did some of my own research into these claims. Bhaiyya Joshi, notwithstanding his conspiracy theories, did pique my curiosity on the subject.
So, where does one begin looking for these kinds of things? Of course, the only places [...]

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Ordinarily, I would not even pay attention to things like “India invented mathematics” and “The vedas have formulas for ICBMs.” Statements like this originate from over-zealous chauvinism and Indocentrism, more than anything else. However, there is a book out (it’s not new) called The Origin of Mathematics by V. Lakshmikantham and S. Leela which claims [...]

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Some time back I wrote a post about the Buddha Machine. Then, around a month later, on Buddha Purnima Sepia Mutiny made another post about it. Well, with the Buddha Machine, you could attain nirvana for $23.
But wait. To attain nirvana, one must be tuned into the cosmic consciousness! And how can one expect to [...]

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A bit late in the coming since Pi Day was 3/14 1:59pm (pi = 3.14159…), but what the hey. For all you math geeks out there: Celebrate Pi Day!. Some steps:
Step 1: Create some pi ambiance. Just like people display a tree and mistletoe, wear Christmas gear, and sing Christmas songs around Christmas, there is [...]

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