Author Archives: Xander

About Xander

Xander completed his PhD in mathematics at UC Riverside in the Spring of 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. His thesis, titled Fractal Zeta Functions in Metric Measure Spaces, explores some connections between the geometry of certain metric spaces, and the spectra of the Laplace operator on those spaces. He is currently an instructor at Northland Pioneer College, out in the beautiful deserts of northern Arizona.

Hummingbirds

Posted on 31 July 2015 by Xander

Grad school is keeping me busy. In the meantime, hummingbirds from our balcony feeder:

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Fractal Music(?)

Posted on 21 August 2014 by Xander

In the past, I have treated fractals visually. For instance, in my treatment of the Mandelbrot set, I chose points in the complex plane to represent pixels in an image, applied the iterative function \(z_{n+1} = z_{n}^2 + z_0\) to … Continue reading →

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It’s a ξ, See?

Posted on 19 August 2014 by Xander

While looking for a dead-tree set of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, I came across a scanned version in the University of Michigan’s Historical Math Collection. Not quite what I wanted, but I was highly amused by the annotations on … Continue reading →

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2014 Fields Medal

Posted on 13 August 2014 by Xander

The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) announced the 2014 Fields Medal awardees last night. The Fields Medal is one of (if not the) most prestigious honors in the mathematical community—it is often portrayed as the “Nobel Prize of mathematics.” Of … Continue reading →

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Black Moon

Posted on 23 July 2014 by Xander

I finished my masters a little more than a year ago and am starting a Ph.D. in two months. In the intervening year, I have done a little research, some teaching, and made the (very) occasional post here. I have … Continue reading →

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MMM LXXII

Posted on 9 June 2014 by Xander
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MMM LXXI

Posted on 2 June 2014 by Xander
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LEGO Fractals

Posted on 16 April 2014 by Xander

My daughter has recently started playing with DUPLO blocks pretty consistently, which has me thinking about LEGO—the toy of my youth (and hopefully her’s in a couple of years, too!). In some ways, LEGO is an ideal medium for exploring … Continue reading →

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Lunar Eclipse

Posted on 15 April 2014 by Xander

A propos of nothing in particular, and with minimal commentary, a couple of pictures of last night’s lunar eclipse (rollover either picture for annotation or click for a larger version): While the moon was lovely, the proximity of the eclipsed … Continue reading →

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Updates

Posted on 8 April 2014 by Xander

In the last year, I have been pretty inactive here. On the other hand, I have been quite active in real life. Last November, I took a trip to the UK in order to present some of my work and … Continue reading →

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