A bit of slightly overdue but welcome news: the arXiv has enabled MathJax on paper abstract pages. Authors have regularly been using LaTeX syntax in their titles and abstracts, but now the arXiv typesets them automatically for you.
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All Squared, Number 10: Maths journalism
Evelyn Lamb is a professional mathematician who has taken up journalism on the side. She received the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship last year, and spent the summer writing for the magazine Scientific American. We talked to her about maths journalism, the challenges involved in making advances accessible to a wider audience, and the differences between blogging and print journalism.
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Prime gaps update
There’s been some progress on the bounded gaps between primes front since we last checked in.
The Polymath8 project has got the gap down to $4,680$. But that’s small beans: James Maynard, a postgrad student at Oxford, announced at a meeting in Oberwolfach that he has got the gap down to $700$. Emmanuel Kowalski has written an effusive post on his blog singing the praises of Maynard’s achievement.
GeoGebra Conference Budapest 2014
Just thought I’d bring the upcoming GeoGebra Conference 2014 in Budapest to your attention.
The main purpose of the conference is to provide a meeting platform for [International GeoGebra Institute (IGI)] members, and GeoGebra users, including teachers of all levels, educators, researchers, and developers from all over the World. The conference will allow ample time for speakers and audience interaction, and will encourage discussion of experiences, sharing of good practices, effective mathematics pedagogies that include GeoGebra, and enhancement of professional skills, and knowledge.
More information and registration: GeoGebra Conference Budapest 2014
BEAUTY OF MATHEMATICS by Parachutes
[vimeo url=https://vimeo.com/77330591]
This is enormously satisfying.
via newcastleDM on Twitter
The Magic Cube – a 3D logic puzzle
A chap called Jonathan Kinlay has innovented a Rubik’s cube variant which only has one colour, but six different integer sequences on its sides. As a colourblind integer sequence enthusiast, this basically has to be my ideal Christmas present, right?
Well, it’s currently looking for funding on Kickstarter in advance of actually existing, and the first units won’t be delivered before Christmas, but it’s a fun idea anyway.
Nirvana by Numbers
Alex Bellos has made another documentary for BBC Radio 4, this time about the number zero. It’s a pleasant bit of numerical tourism, as Alex travels to India to find the source of the number zero in a small shrine, with a diversion to talk about Vedic maths along the way.
You can listen to Nirvana by Numbers on the BBC iPlayer. It looks like it’s available indefinitely. If Alex has whetted your appetite for historical zeroes, the book Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife is a cracking read.
Listen: Nirvana by Numbers on BBC Radio 4.