Owing to an incredibly small discrepancy between the atomic clock length of a year and the time it takes for the sun to orbit the earth, and the dogged insistence of scientists for being as close as possible to correct all the time, tomorrow is the most recent in a series of days where time goes a bit weird momentarily due to the addition of a leap second. This means 30th June 2012 will last for 86,401 seconds instead of the usual 86,400. Internet mathematician and pedant Matt Parker reports this as an 0.00116% increase on the usual number of seconds in a day.
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Etienne Ghys, 2012 LMS Hardy Lecturer
It was a couple of weeks ago now that I saw Étienne Ghys deliver a lecture titled On cutting cloth, according to Chebyshev at Newcastle University, as part of his lecture tour as Hardy Fellow for 2012. I had no idea what the talk was about and only a faint idea of who Prof Ghys was but I was persuaded to go by my ex-supervisor, who also happens to be Newcastle’s LMS rep. It turned out to be an enormously interesting and entertaining talk on a very accessible problem (in the sense that you can easily understand what the problem is and why the solution works, if not how you get there) by one of the most eminent mathematicians working today.
Math/Maths 102: Turing, mad scientist & Newton, action hero
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: Turing Centenary; Shouryya Ray, 16-Year-Old ‘Genius,’ Didn’t Actually Solve Newton’s 350-Year-Old Mathematical Problem; LMS Good Practice Scheme on Women in Mathematics; On “Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Contains Strategies that Dominate Any Evolutionary Opponent”; Colin Beveridge’s Super Subtraction Feat; DragonBox: iPhone Algebra Game; ShareLaTex; Isaac Newton set to become the next Hollywood action hero; Computing Mathematics: Tony Mann appointed to 415-year-old London College; Museum of Mathematics Opening Ceremony: 12-12-12; Maths Busking Engage U Results; Math52 reaches Kickstarter goal; Awards showcase excellence in data journalism around the globe; and more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 102: Turing, mad scientist & Newton, action hero
An answer to what Shouryya Ray’s ‘unsolved Newton problem’ was
You may remember a story, widely reported, that 16 year old student Shouryya Ray from Dresden had solved “puzzles posed by Sir Isaac Newton that have baffled mathematicians for 350 years“. You may have read our write up of this, which concluded that
it is likely that some piece of impressive work has been completed and Shouryya Ray is to be commended. However, pending further information on the work, we are now fairly convinced that this is being overblown by the press reports.
You may also remember that some reports had Ray coming across the problems “during a school trip to Dresden University where professors claimed they were uncrackable”. Now an open letter has appeared on the webpages of the Technische Universität Dresden signed by Prof. Dr. Ralph Chill and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Voigt, which offers some answers.
Unusual prime number competition results
Author Robin Sloan offered a simple competition:
give me a prime number of your choosing. I’ll send books to the five people who choose the lowest unique prime numbers. So, if you pick 2 but seven other people pick 2, no book for you. If you pick 3 and no one else picks 3, you get a book.
Which number would you pick?
The primes people chose, including the five winners, and more background information are given in a blog post The Penumbra primes.
Tony Mann to lecture on ‘Computing Mathematics’ at Gresham College
Tony Mann from the University of Greenwich has been appointed Visiting Professor of Computing Mathematics at Gresham College, London. This means he will deliver a
series of free public lectures will look at the mathematics of computing, and the computing of mathematics. The lectures will consider what can go wrong, how computers sometimes get the wrong answer, and the ingenuity mathematicians have used in overcoming these inherent problems. Since Gresham Professors such as Henry Briggs, Edmund Gunter and, more recently, Louis Milne-Thomson were pioneers in the mechanisation of computation, he is especially pleased to address these subjects at Gresham College.
Tickets now available for the opening of the Museum of Mathematics in New York
Tickets are now available to the Opening Ceremony of the New York Museum of Mathematics on 12-12-12.
Register here: Museum of Mathematics Opening Ceremony.