# Dani’s OEIS adventures: triangular square numbers

Hi! I’m Dani Poveda. This is my first post here on The Aperiodical. I’m from Spain, and I’m not a mathematician (I’d love to be one, though). I’m currently studying a Spanish equivalent to HNC in Computer Networking. I’d like to share with you some of my inquiries about some numbers. In this case, about triangular square numbers.

I’ll start at the beginning.

I’ve always loved maths, but I wasn’t aware of the number of YouTube maths channels there were. During the months of February and March 2016, I started following some of them (Brady Haran’s Numberphile, James Grime and Matt Parker among others). On July 13th, Matt published the shortest maths video he has ever made:

Maybe it’s a short video, but it got me truly mired in those numbers, as I’ve loved them since I read The Number Devil when I was 8. I only needed some pens, some paper, my calculator (Casio fx-570ES) and if I needed extra help, my laptop to write some code. And I had that quite near me, as I had just got home from tutoring high school students in maths.

I’ll start explaining now how I focused on this puzzle trying to figure out a solution.

# Mobile Numbers: Products of Twin Primes

In this series of posts, Katie investigates simple mathematical concepts using the Google Sheets spreadsheet app on her phone. If you have a simple maths trick, pattern or concept you’d like to see illustrated in this series, please get in touch.

Having spoken at the MathsJam annual conference in November 2016 about my previous phone spreadsheet on multiples of nine, I was contacted by a member of the audience with another interesting number fact they’d used a phone spreadsheet to investigate: my use of =MID() to pick out individual digits had inspired them, and I thought I’d share it here in another of these columns (LOL spreadsheet jokes).

# Graph Isomorphism panto: oh no it isn’t; oh yes it is!

As we reported back in November 2015, László Babai came up with an algorithm to decide if two graphs are isomorphic in quasipolynomial time. At the time, this proof still needed peer review, and in the last week or so, two big developments have occurred on that front.

On Wednesday 4th January, an error was discovered in the proof. Harald Helfgott (of the University of Göttingen in Germany and France’s National Center for Scientific Research), who studied the paper for several months, discovered that the algorithm was not quasipolynomial ($\displaystyle{ 2^{\mathrm{O}((\log n)^{c})} }$ for some fixed $c>0$) as claimed, but merely subexponenential: growing faster than a polynomial but still significantly slower than exponential growth).

Adorably, Babai posted this message on his website:

I apologize to those who were drawn to my lectures on this subject solely because of the quasipolynomial claim, prematurely magnified on the internet in spite of my disclaimers. I believe those looking for an interesting combination of group theory, combinatorics, and algorithms need not feel disappointed.

But maths is all about the drama, so on Monday 9th January Babai announced a fix for the error, and it’s now back on the quasipolynomial table. This has now been confirmed (as of 14th Jan) by Harald Helfgott himself at the Bourbaki seminar in Paris. Amusingly, Helfgott had only been studying the paper in such detail in order to give the seminar, and it was this close scrutiny which allowed him to discover the mistake.

Announcement on Babai’s website

Graph Isomorphism Vanquished — Again, at Quanta Magazine

Bourbaki Seminar – Harald Helfgott, on YouTube

# Mathematical genius: extrapolate from your own experience?

The BBC biography series Great Lives covered in its most recent episode Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the closing minutes of the programme, host Matthew Paris said this, which I found quite interesting (or at least, interestingly expressed):

I’m so far from understanding the mind of a mathematical genius that it’s simply inconceivable that you could tell a person an apparently random number and he could intuit or deduce the kind of fact that he deduced about that taxi license number. I mean, I can’t run a four-minute mile, but I once ran a five-minute mile, and I can extrapolate from my own experience, in a way understand how someone might just be a lot better than me at something that, in an inferior way, I can also do. But Ramanujan isn’t like that. It’s as though this man were a different species, not just a superior example of the same species. Can you learn to do this kind of thing? Could I, if I had applied myself? Or is it that goddess again, is it really just genius?

# Carnival of Mathematics 141

The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of December, and compiled by the team, is now online at Ganit Charcha.

The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.

# Particularly mathematical New Year Honours 2017

Usually at this time of year, I have a look through the New Year Honours list for particularly mathematical appointments. Here are the names I’ve found that are particularly mathematical.

• Tricia Dodd, Chief Methodology Officer, UK Statistics Authority, appointed MBE “for services to Statistics and Research”.
• Dave Watson, director of IBM Research in the UK, who apparently has a focus on big data, appointed CBE “for services to Science and Engineering Research”.
• Maggie Philbin, appointed OBE “for services to Promoting careers in STEM and Creative Industries”.
• Anne-Marie Imafidon, co-founder and CEO of Stemettes, appointed MBE “for services to Young Women within STEM Sectors”.

I think every time I have done this (for New Year and Birthday Honours since 2013), there has been at least one person on the list, and usually several, specifically included for services to mathematics or mathematics education. This time, this is not the case, though there is one mention of statistics.

Are there any others I’ve missed? Please add any of interest in the comments below. A full list may be obtained from the UK Government website.