Today, author Simon Singh took part in a Twitter-based webchat for the BBC News website, taking questions about his new book on Maths in the Simpsons, and mathematics in general. Here’s how it all went down.
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Bart The Genius
Amusing to hear John Humphrys incredulous at something I felt was well-known & obvious: The Simpsons has maths jokes http://t.co/jSJO7Or0yp
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) October 2, 2013
Maths at the Fringe
Starting next week, the historic city of Edinburgh will be taken over by entertainers of all types, performing comedy, dance, theatre and music, entertaining visitors to their massive world-famous festival fringe. Since discerning mathematicians sometimes also enjoy being entertained, I thought I’d write a roundup of the shows maths has non-empty intersection with.
First up, since we haven’t mentioned him in a while, it’s Alan Turing! No, his reanimated corpse isn’t performing edgy stand-up, but theatre company Idle Motion is performing a visual theatre piece entitled That Is All You Need To Know, celebrating the work of Bletchley Park codebreakers. Alan Turing Alan Turing Alan Turing.
More maths at Hay Festival
After plugging Marcus du Sautoy’s appearances at Hay Festival, it occurred to me that it would only be fair to mention the other mathematically-interesting events of the week.
singingbanana code challenge
James Grime, of the Enigma project and guest editor of the February 2012 code month at Nrich, has posted a code breaking challenge on his YouTube channel singingbanana. The prize is a signed copy of Simon Singh’s The Code Book. You can get the ciphertext to decrypt along with a couple of clues presented with James’ trademark charm in the video singingbanana code challenge 2012. The winner and solution will be announced in March.
(Edited 11:28 to add link to Nrich Codes and Ciphers – February 2012 page.)
