(Again, sorry for spamming y’all with mathematicians.)

(Also, I’m using this as a distraction from the fact that I’m a complete moron who will never amount to anything ever.)

HOKAY.
SO.

Two badass math fellows were born on this day.

1. Felix Klein (isn’t that a badass name?)
Klein was a German mathematician born on this day in 1849. He is most famous for the non-orientable surface named after him: The Klein bottle!

Picture (from Wiki):

A Klein bottle is similar to a Mobius strip except unlike the Mobius, it is a closed manifold rather than an open one. And while a Mobius strip can be imbedded in 3-D space (which is why we can make them with just a piece of paper and some tape!), a Klein bottle cannot.*

2. Andrey Kolmogorov
Kolmogorov, a Soviet mathematician born on this day in 1903, was known for quite a lot of things, but for me the thing that jumps out is the nonparametric statistical test he had a hand in developing.

The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is one used when your data just aren’t being normal but you still need to examine them somehow. In particular, the test is used when you want to determine if two datasets differ significantly. It gets around the issue of nonparametric-ness by making no assumption about the distribution of data in either set.

I’d go into how, but it’s late and I have to get up early tomorrow and if I start talking about stats I won’t shut up for days, so make me promise I’ll do a blog on the K-S test later.

But yeah. Two awesome math dudes today! Woo!

*That doesn’t stop people from making Klein-esque models. If you want a Klein bottle model, go here.