How much does a Dougie weigh on Jupiter?

I spent an evening with old friends just after Christmas. One of their sons is fascinated by Space, and always has great questions for me about it. This year he asked how much he would weigh on Jupiter. I admitted that I didn’t know the answer, but that a) It wasn’t a single number, as the surface of Jupiter (if one exists) is not very well understood and different heights in the atmosphere would give different weights and b) I would find out. It took a little Googling to find some information about the density profile of Jupiter, which includes information about Saturn too. The paper is the following, with abstract:

Taken from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/full/nature14278.html

Taken from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/full/nature14278.html

In this paper is the following pair of graphs:

Taken from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7546/images/nature14278-sf4.jpg

Which is all we need to calculate how much Dougie weighs on Jupiter. In the lower plot we see two different models of the density of Jupiter at different heights.…

By | January 10th, 2016|Fun, Uncategorized|0 Comments

The Power of Bayesian Theory

Apparently the Bayesian Theory proves to be one of the most powerful concepts man has ever invented. It appears to be a strong pillar for most applied sciences. Find out more about why it is worth understanding from the link at Scientific American.

How clear is this post?
By | January 5th, 2016|Uncategorized|0 Comments

The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics – a review

Disclaimer – I was sent a review copy of this book, upon request.

(Image taken from here).

A detailed review of a book like this is almost impossible, given both the range of topics, as well as the number of authors involved. However, I can attempt to give an overview of the feel and breadth of the book.

As can be seen from the table of contents, this is a book of absolutely vast scope, and such scope has both advantages and disadvantages. Its advantages are simply that it covers so many topics, that almost every aspect of applied mathematics that you could think of is included, from numerical techniques, to cell biology, from the theory of solitons to cosmology, from how to write a book for the general public to science in the media, from complex analysis to graph theory, and so many more areas besides. As such it is an amazing reference to give very useful leads to go into the world of research in applied mathematics.…

By | January 5th, 2016|Book reviews, Reviews|1 Comment