Me on... mathematics?!

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I was interviewed for this episode of "The Mathematicians Podcast", which would certainly come as a surprise to my math allergic teenager self. But it's about mathematics in ancient philosophy, so that was a relief:

https://mathematicians.podbean.com/e/episode-11-injectives-peter-adamso…

Andrew on 6 March 2025

Squaring

At 43:00, you say "x^2 is greater than or equal to x for all x" and add the qualifier "for all positive numbers". This is actually true for every number as far as I know! Each negative number squared is going to give a positive number which is by definition bigger, and for 0 you will just get 0 back and the same for 1. I think the host missed the "equals" part when he added the qualifier "greater than 1". In any case you wouldn't, assuming we are keeping to integers, get a smaller number from squaring. Of course if we don't then it would fail for say 1/2.

Peter Adamson on 6 March 2025

Squaring

Oh true, I should have said "for all integers" or something.

Greg on 30 March 2025

Squaring

Yes. Definitely not true form numbers between -1 and 1.

Greg Griffiths on 2 April 2025

Squaring

Haha. My bad. The magnitude of a square is less than that of the original number, if that number lies between -1  and 1 and is not zero. The square of a number is less than that number, if the original number lies between 0 and 1. Apologies for my error.

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