The Aperiodical 

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GeoGebra now available for tablets

By Peter Rowlett. Posted September 15, 2013

You may be aware of GeoGebra. In a previous post, our very own CP described it as “a surprisingly capable piece of free dynamic maths software, used widely by teachers and geometry aficionados”. I am preparing lecture notes for the new academic year and have been making diagrams in GeoGebra (on Ubuntu, since you asked), both to print in my notes and animate in my lectures. I can insert $\LaTeX$ labels and export as code for PGF or PSTricks. Here’s one:



Now, following a successful Kickstarter (which we covered in a previous post), GeoGebra have released tablet versions of the software. So GeoGebra is now available on Windows, OS X and various flavours of Linux (.deb, .rpm, other), as a Chrome App, a Chrome Web Application and in a ‘Java Webstart‘ version (though be aware that the Java Webstart is being phased out), and now for Windows 8 or RT, Android and iPad tablets. Here is a screenshot of the iPad app:



Download and more information at the GeoGebra website.



Via MEI on Twitter and Michael Borcherds on our previous post.

Not mentioned on The Aperiodical this month, March/April

By Katie Steckles. Posted April 15, 2013

Here’s a round up of some other recent (and now less so) news stories we didn’t cover in full.

13 New 3-body orbits discovered

Physicists from the University of Belgrade have discovered numerically 13 new solutions to the 3-body problem, in 2 dimensions. Described as “quite a feat in mathematical physics”, the discovery makes progress towards the long-standing problem of determining how three particles, when left to move under the action of their gravity on each other, will behave. The solutions they’ve found are all for particles moving in a 2-dimensional plane, and are represented using points on the surface of a sphere to describe the position of the three particles.

Article from Science

Arxiv Paper

Claimed disproof of the Triangulation Conjecture

The Triangulation Conjecture, a result in topology, may turn out to be false as UCLA’s Ciprian Manolescu claims to have disproved it. The conjecture claims that every compact topological manifold can be triangulated by a locally finite simplicial complex, which means that, roughly, any surface (well, n-dimensional surface) can be divided into triangles in a specific way that topologists find exciting. The conjecture has already been disproved in dimension 4, although hope was held it might be true in higher dimensions. We’re still waiting for confirmation the disproof is correct, but if it is it wipes out many topologists’ hopes of being able to divide certain types of surfaces into triangles in a specific way.

Blog post on the topic, with an interesting comments discussion

(via Dave Richeson on Twitter)

Math Cannot be Patented

A patent suit filed in the Eastern District of Texas has been dismissed on the grounds that mathematics cannot be patented. Uniloc, described in an article on news blog Rackspace as ‘a notorious patent troll’, alleged that a floating point numerical calculation by the Linux operating system violated U.S. Patent 5,892,697. You can’t patent maths!

Mathematics Cannot Be Patented – Case Dismissed at Rackspace

Transactions of the LMS: an open access journal

Fans of Open Access journals will be pleased to hear that the London Mathematical Society is launching one, titled Transactions of the London Mathematical Society. The LMS would like to emphasise that:

By launching this journal, the LMS is not promoting any particular cause and we do not advocate one publishing payment model over another.

Details can be found on pages 8-11 of their most recent newsletter.

LMS Newsletter #424