Using Math as a way to determine the author of a story? I’d never heard of it until we found out about the work of Dan Look. Dan is a math professor at St. Lawrence University. He was recently published in an interdisciplinary book applying Conan the Barbarian stories to a variety of academic areas. This is one of those interviews where I was skeptical when Casey booked it but was a total fan by the time we were done. Listen, enjoy, share, repeat
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
1) The link to the book we were discussing
2) A quick link to a topic mentioned during the interview (Zipf’s Law)
(Zipf’s law actually refers to a ton of things; I mentioned it in regards to word frequencies but this NYTimes piece is primarily about cities)
3) A TED talk that relates to the Zipf’s Law stuff in the second link. This is not directly related to the interview but it does show how some of these seemingly “impossible” mathematical ideas play out in real life.





