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You're reading: Monthly Archives: October 2012
Interesting Esoterica Summation, volume 5
Whoah there, traveller! Time for a break. Unhitch your wagon from the locomotive of Progress and roll into the railway siding of Idle Curiosity. I’ve got some more interesting esoterica for you.
In case you’re new to this: every now and then I encounter a paper or a book or an article that grabs my interest but isn’t directly useful for anything. It might be about some niche sub-sub-subtopic I’ve never heard of, or it might talk about something old from a new angle, or it might just have a funny title. I put these things in my Interesting Esoterica collection on Mendeley. And then when I’ve gathered up enough, I collect them here.
In this post the titles are links to the original sources, and I try to add some interpretation or explanation of why I think each thing is interesting below the abstract.
Some things might not be freely available, or even available for a reasonable price. Sorry.
Katie Steckles interviewed on mathblogging.org
Tip-top maths blog review site mathblogging.org has been running a series of interviews with maths bloggers. I think all three of the Aperiodical triumvirate have taken part, but Katie’s answers were published today. She said some things that made me feel unexpectedly positive about this site, so I’m happy.
I’m sure mine and Peter’s responses will appear in due course. Meanwhile, interviews with Igor Carron, Izabella Laba, Samuel Hansen, David Wees and Christian P. Robert are already online and worth reading.
Follow Friday, 12/10/12
With nonmonotonic irregularity, it’s time for another Follow Friday – a round up of the maths people on Twitter you should be following, or at least some fun links you can look at.
Carnival of Mathematics 91
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of September, is now online at Matheminutes.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. For more information about the Carnival of Mathematics, click here.
PRIMES-USA
PRIMES, it turns out, isn’t just a word for numbers without any proper factors – it’s also a mentoring programme for high school students in the USA, based at MIT. The students visit there once a week from February to May, and work with academics on real research. They also run similar programmes for computer science and computational biology.
The scheme has recently been extended to allow students not local to MIT (or in possession of a private jet or teleporter ((Although if they’ve invented a teleporter, this scheme probably can’t help them much)) ) to attend. PRIMES-USA is a national scheme for students across the country, which requires them to visit MIT for a conference in May, but the rest of the meetings take place via Skype.
Henry Segerman’s 30-cell puzzle
Henry Segerman is a mathematician at the University of Melbourne with a keen interest in 3d-printing mathematical shapes. He’s just uploaded a video showing off his latest creation, a 30-cell burr puzzle created in collaboration with Saul Schleimer:
[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJwqT_sbB_A]
Pretty cool, eh?
As well as providing a PDF describing the puzzle, Henry’s uploaded the design to Shapeways so you can have your very own copy to play with.
Earlier this year, Henry and Saul’s half 120- and 600-cells won the “Best Use of Mathematics” award at the 2012 Bridges Conference.