Baristas and Elliptical Galaxies – 00

What kind of galaxies have the highest entropy? Late at night, waiting for a hyped-up rocket launch, I stumbled upon an old attempt to calculate the entropy of my simulated dark matter ensemble while idly scrolling my old code from my first year of PhD. It wasn't used in any published result, other than confirming … Continue reading Baristas and Elliptical Galaxies – 00

How Euler Tackled an innocent-looking integral

For unclear reasons, I really wanted to write down one wacky (read: elegant) calculus exercise tonight -- have you integrated the cotangent function twice? I feel the infinite series are mere toys dancing at the fingertips of Euler, and consider his method to tackle this quite beautiful, my usual attitude towards Euler math. For some … Continue reading How Euler Tackled an innocent-looking integral