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.
You're reading: Yearly Archives: 2012
π vs τ: FOTSN/Tau Day special
Since it’s $\tau$ Day, we thought we’d give Festival of the Spoken Nerd constant-fans Matt Parker and Steve Mould a chance to air their respective viewpoints in the $\tau$ vs $\pi$ debate. It’s a maths showdown!
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
Spelling Bees Puzzle Blog
Hello. I’ve been talked into writing another blog post about my latest puzzle to appear in the Puzzlebomb. Spelling Bees appeared in the May and June issues. The solver is presented with a honeycomb grid containing letters and one bee (of the insect variety; the grid may contain several or no Bs). Their task is to find the two words (or phrases) that can be traced along a path through every cell (to use jargon that will be familiar to cruciverbalists and beekeepers alike) in the honeycomb grid. The bee acts as a wild card and will stand for a different letter in both words. The cells which are the first and last letters of each word are shaded to give an extra helping hand.
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.
Manchester MathsJam June 2012 Recap
Having been absent from the May MathsJam, I have been promised a writeup by Manchester MathsJam regular and sometime Aperiodical article-writer Andrew Taylor. This has not yet arrived, and in the interests of making things as temporally confusing as possible, I’m going to post the June writeup now and let that one happen whenever it happens.
June’s MathsJam coincided with one of England’s games in the Euro Football Time 2012 Soccer Cup, or whatever it’s called, but luckily the pub we use for our MathsJams is one of the few locations in Manchester not showing the game, and instead we were treated to some live jazz from the other room.