Transreal numbers
Like my friend Andy, I also had the transreal numbers lecture by Dr James Anderson as part of my first year degree course. Like him, I also found it to be utter rubbish, with most of what he said appearing to be rehashed information which has already been available to the public for many years.
For example, the IEEE defined NaN (not a number) to use when the answer to a mathematical equation is not a number (i.e. infinity or undefined) around 20 years ago. James Anderson calls this nullity, denotes it with the Greek letter phi and call it his own.
If you think that’s bad, then have a look at how he proposes to solve the problem of dividing by zero as well as his ideas for a time-travelling “perspex” processor which can, in his words, “go back in time and tell itself to do work in order to achieve 100% CPU efficiency with zero idle time”.
I think Andy gets it spot on with his analysis of the lecture as a whole. Also, have a look at the lecture slides which Andy has posted on the entry for a good laugh.