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The Trigonometric Tables of Georg Joachim Rheticus' Opus Palatinum: The Greatest Computational Effort in the History of Humankind

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If one were to ask who put the greatest effort to calculate mathematical tables in the history of mankind, the best answer would be Georg Joachim Rheticus. His highly accurate trigonometric tables contained in “Opus Palatinum” were used until the wake of 20 th century in various fields such as astronomy, geography, surveying , navigation, to name a few. His orginal trigonometric tables, particularly the table of sines, were accurate upto 10 decimal places. But it contained few errors in cotangents,  cosecants etc which were later corrected by a mathematician named Bartholomous Pitiscus, who then republished the sine table of Rheticus to 15 decimal places (which he had already calculated, but did not publish). But nothing that was comparable to his trigonometric tables ever existed before and it remained the standard mathematical table for centuries to come. The aim of this presentation is to shed some light on how Rheticus was able to compute such a magnificent table.

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Kerala in the recent few days has been topping in number of covid cases. Their callousness towards the crisis is only matched by their propaganda that they're the best in combating the virus, despite, for instance, easing lockdown restrictions to appease the Muslim community during Bakrid even as cases were climbing. The latest spin they have added to their disinformation campaign is a statement by their health minister Veena George that there has never been a shortage of oxygen for patients which has resulted in loss of lives, no rush on hospitals, and no medical emergencies. Even a casual look at media reports that has come to us will render this as poorly drafted propaganda. Contrary to what Mrs. Veena George has claimed, several instances of patients losing lives due to lack of oxygen has been reported in Kerala. The horrors the relatives had to go through seeing helplessly their loved die  is something that is sticking out even with the insensitive health minister trying to co

Are VVPAT machines really hackable? Response to allegations made by ex-IAS Kannan Gopinathan

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Let us first make explicit our intentions in attempting such a response opposing allegations against the EVM-VVPAT combination    We all were aware of the controversies relating to EVMS when they were first introduced.  Since EVMS are electronic devices and since they include a processor like thing inside them, there was a lot of hue and cry regarding the possibility of it being hacked.  Control unit and ballot unit, source:ECI   But the contentions regarding hacking were based on an incorrect understanding of what is happening inside the EVM and what it is made up of.  EVMS does not in any way work like desktop computers or even microprocessor based devices.  Once they are programmed during manufacturing process, there is no means by which it can be reprogrammed to make it behave like we want to.  It is more like a non-programmable calculator with the very basic set of electronics that do not in anyway resemble modern computers / programmable devices.  Moreover, EV