Steven Strogatz returns with his 8th post of the “math, from basic to baffling” series, this time focusing his articulate discourse on the concept of differential geometry.

It is a must read and will leave you a whole lot clearer on things like geodesics and shortest paths.

Loved the final paragraph, which I present below:

Sometimes when people say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, they mean it figuratively, as a way of ridiculing nuance and affirming common sense. In other words, keep it simple. But battling obstacles can give rise to great beauty — so much so that in art, and in math, it’s often more fruitful to impose constraints on ourselves. Think of haiku, or sonnets, or telling the story of your life in six words. The same is true of all the math that’s been created to find the shortest way from here to there when you can’t take the easy way out.

Two points. Many paths. Mathematical bliss.

Two young army cadets wanting to break the ranks. One smart, the other a romantic. Two powerful army generals gambolling in power. One is the country’s president, and the other touted as the “second most powerful” person. The country is Pakistan, and in the backdrop is the war between the USSR, Afghanistan and the USA.
The president, General Zia, dies in a plane crash. Pak One smoulders on its final journey into a blast and a whimper. Who killed General Zia? The young army cadets? The second most powerful man? The CIA? The ISI? A crate of mangoes? Did blind Zainab have anything to do with it? Or the crow that flits across India and Pakistan depending on the weather?

Mohammed Hanif’s The Case of Exploding Mangoes is a thrilling page-turner. The protagonist, Ali Shigri, is an army cadet whose outlook towards life has a lot to do with his father, Colonel Shigri’s, alleged suicide. His compatriot, Obaid, is a fragile dreamer and clearly a misfit in the army. General Akhtar is the second most powerful man, heading the ISI and keeping a watch on everything of importance in his country. Then there is the US Ambassador, running his own games to fufill their motives beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan’s borders.

The people who would like Zia dead are quite a few in this fast-paced explosive novel. Who actually does it, and whether you come to know of it is something you need to dive into its pages to find out. Ali Shigri’s ponderings on life’s nuances and its unpleasantries are noteworthy in the context of the proceedings.

The Case of Exploding Mangoes might not be a literary achievement (perhaps because it does not wander its cause on topics like humanities and the war suffering?) but it more than surely is a read that leaves you thrilled on having witnessed (from the inside) one of history’s better kept secrets – the death of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq.

Steven Strogatz continues his series on “math, from basic to baffling” with his latest article talking about complex numbers. Very interesting, especially the fractal representation of multiple roots of a polynomial. Check out the article here.

Excerpt:

Better yet, a grand statement called The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra says that the roots of any polynomial are always complex numbers.  In that sense they’re the end of the quest, the holy grail.  They are the culmination of the journey that began with 1.

Which one-time TV actor in Coronation Street and Crown Court released a record on which he sang selections from The King and I with Julie Andrews, before being told by two of the Beatles that he should really take up a musical career? You want a clue? His middle name is Pandit.

Infact, his full name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji. To find out, read this article.