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La fabrique sonore by Ali Monemi and Robin Meier
Least world records
This morning I saw a tweet from Tony Mann about Berry’s Paradox, formulated by Tony as “The smallest integer not identifiable in a tweet“. (A paradox, of course, because that phrase identifies a specific integer.)
This reminds me that I have noticed a few times recently people online reciting the joke that goes like: “I hold the world record (jointly) for least world records (this one)”. (Here’s an arbitrary example found through Twitter search.)
Accept for the moment that such a record exists. Then someone who held one world record for something else (most socks being worn by people spinning plates in a leisure centre, or something) would also jointly hold one world record, so would share the world record for least, so would hold two, so wouldn’t share the record…
Sun Ray Ricochet by Matt W. Moore
Second-Rate Minds: my second post
I just published my second post over at Second-Rate Minds, the mathematical writing blog launched by Samuel Hansen and I back in August. This is a comment/review piece about my reading of G.H. Hardy’s influential 1940 essay A Mathematicians Apology. You may remember we took the name of the blog Second-Rate Minds from a quote from the Apology. As an attempt to be provocative, the piece is entitled: ‘Hardy’s Apology: what’s to dislike?‘
Flightpattern by Gwen Vanhee
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Sarah
It has been nearly a month since I posted here. Sorry about that. My friend Sarah Shepherd died last month. I expect many people reading this blog will know Sarah for her work on iSquared Magazine or perhaps you’ll have heard Sarah as my guest on the maths news episodes of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast.
A fund is open in Sarah’s memory in aid of Rethink. Please consider donating to this.