full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ron Eglash: The fractals at the heart of African designs

Unscramble the Blue Letters

I want to start my story in gemnray, in 1877, with a mathematician named Georg Cantor. And catnor dedeicd he was going to take a line and erase the middle third of the line, and then take those two rnutlsieg lines and bring them back into the same process, a recursive process. So he starts out with one line, and then two, and then four, and then 16, and so on. And if he does this an infinite number of times, which you can do in maiametcths, he ends up with an infinite number of lines, each of which has an infinite number of points in it. So he realized he had a set whose number of eentlmes was larger than infinity. And this blew his mind. Literally. He ckheced into a sanitarium. (Laughter) And when he came out of the sanitarium, he was covnniecd that he had been put on earth to found transfinite set theory because the largest set of infinity would be God Himself. He was a very religious man. He was a mathematician on a mosisin.

Open Cloze

I want to start my story in _______, in 1877, with a mathematician named Georg Cantor. And ______ _______ he was going to take a line and erase the middle third of the line, and then take those two _________ lines and bring them back into the same process, a recursive process. So he starts out with one line, and then two, and then four, and then 16, and so on. And if he does this an infinite number of times, which you can do in ___________, he ends up with an infinite number of lines, each of which has an infinite number of points in it. So he realized he had a set whose number of ________ was larger than infinity. And this blew his mind. Literally. He _______ into a sanitarium. (Laughter) And when he came out of the sanitarium, he was _________ that he had been put on earth to found transfinite set theory because the largest set of infinity would be God Himself. He was a very religious man. He was a mathematician on a _______.

Solution

  1. cantor
  2. elements
  3. mission
  4. resulting
  5. convinced
  6. mathematics
  7. checked
  8. decided
  9. germany

Original Text

I want to start my story in Germany, in 1877, with a mathematician named Georg Cantor. And Cantor decided he was going to take a line and erase the middle third of the line, and then take those two resulting lines and bring them back into the same process, a recursive process. So he starts out with one line, and then two, and then four, and then 16, and so on. And if he does this an infinite number of times, which you can do in mathematics, he ends up with an infinite number of lines, each of which has an infinite number of points in it. So he realized he had a set whose number of elements was larger than infinity. And this blew his mind. Literally. He checked into a sanitarium. (Laughter) And when he came out of the sanitarium, he was convinced that he had been put on earth to found transfinite set theory because the largest set of infinity would be God Himself. He was a very religious man. He was a mathematician on a mission.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
infinite number 4
georg cantor 3
seed shape 2
aerial photograph 2
fractal model 2
tiny village 2
spirit people 2
stacked recursively 2
native american 2
kids learn 2
board game 2
deterministic chaos 2
binary code 2
brian eno 2

Important Words

  1. blew
  2. bring
  3. cantor
  4. checked
  5. convinced
  6. decided
  7. earth
  8. elements
  9. ends
  10. erase
  11. georg
  12. germany
  13. god
  14. infinite
  15. infinity
  16. larger
  17. largest
  18. laughter
  19. line
  20. lines
  21. literally
  22. man
  23. mathematician
  24. mathematics
  25. middle
  26. mind
  27. mission
  28. named
  29. number
  30. points
  31. process
  32. put
  33. realized
  34. recursive
  35. religious
  36. resulting
  37. sanitarium
  38. set
  39. start
  40. starts
  41. story
  42. theory
  43. times
  44. transfinite