Having gathered a few data points about people’s availability for the recreational maths seminar, and heavily weighted towards my own, it looks like weekend evenings are the most convenient times for everyone to get together for the recreational maths seminar. So, let’s say 7pm GMT on Sunday evening, the 11th of November. That’s 2pm EST (New York), 11am PST (California) and 6am EDT (Eastern Australia, on the 12th of November).

The idea is that we’ll all pile into a Google+ hangout and discuss a fairly accessible paper on a fun subject. For this first attempt, I’ve picked the paper Picture-Hanging Puzzles by Demaine et al. The puzzle is very easy to state, but the authors really run with it and generalise it, using a little bit of group theory and some boolean logic. I’m going to assume no background knowledge, so don’t be dissuaded from joining in if the paper looks too dense at first glance. The aim of the seminar is for everyone to get something out of it, and learn some real maths in a fun setting.

If you’d like to take part, please join the google+ event.

I’ve also created a group on Mendeley to collect the papers discussed in the seminar. I hope it’ll fill up to become a decent collection of interesting, accessible papers on a variety of topics.

Information

Google+ event
Seminar test-run, on “Twin Towers of Hanoi”
Mendeley paper collection