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Inspired by the great Geometry Daily blog.
You're reading: Posts By Christian Lawson-Perfect
Aperiodical Round Up 8: if a bird heard the word ‘surd’
Right, let’s be havin’ ya! My name’s Christian Perfect, I’ve got some links, and you’ve got some eyes. Aperiodical Round Up 8, arriving later than scheduled at Platform Your Face.
Let’s ture to the max!
A new study from Prof. Lawks A. Mercy and Dr. O. Goode-Griefe of the Institute of Blogging Studies indicates that we have published absolutely loads of posts about Alan Turing this year, the Alan Turing Year. We’ve posted about Alan Turing events, Alan Turing facts, Alan Turing competitions and O mercy me have we posted about Alan Turing petitions.
So this is the last Turing post of 2012. I’ve been saving this thing up so it can be the last Turing post this year and on Wednesday morning we can put the whole mad shebang behind us.
What I’d like to bring your attention to is nothing so demanding of your attention as a petition or a campaign, but a little suggestion for a simple way to commemorate Alan Turing: Donald A. Knuth has posted on his website that it would be a nice idea to define a meaning for the verb ‘to ture‘.
Can you do long division? And other questions we’d like answers to.
Do you know how to do long division? I don’t. Prompted by an annoying article I saw, I’d like to know how many people do know how to do long division.
So this is as good an opportunity as any to use a side-project I’ve been working on recently, which I’ve called The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey. I’ve asked quite a few questions like the above here or on Twitter, so I thought it would be a good idea to do something systematic about collecting answers to them.
At the moment, I’ve put up a few questions that occurred to me off the top of my head, such as what’s your favourite number?, how do you write the letter $x$?, and of course, can you do long division?
I hope that if I leave the site running long enough, people will drop in and answer questions every now and then. If we get enough answers I’ll do some Science on the responses, otherwise I’ll just have to do some uninformed Punditry instead.
Please go to The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey site and answer a question or two.
Keith Devlin’s 5-week survey of maths course is on YouTube
Keith Devlin, of enormous maths MOOC fame, tweeted that his survey course Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible is now available on YouTube. Until now, it had only been available through iTunes University.
The course consists of five two-hour lectures, delivered over five weeks. Like Keith’s MOOC, it’s an “intro to maths for grown-ups” course to get people engaged in the subject.
Often described as the science of patterns, mathematics is arguably humanity’s most penetrating mental framework for uncovering the hidden patterns that lie behind everything we see, feel, and experience. Galileo described mathematics as the language in which the laws of the universe are written. Intended to give a broad overview of the field, these five illustrated lectures look at counting and arithmetic, shape and geometry, motion and calculus, and chance and probability, and end with a mind-stretching trip to infinity.
Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible on YouTube.
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical this week
My name is Aperiodical, king of kings;
Look on my news queue, ye Mighty, and despair!
Among other lessons not heeded by your fearless editorial trio this week are those of queueing theory. Our news queue has got a bit out of hand, so it’s time to take drastic action. Here’s what we were going to cover this week, but didn’t get round to. Some of the stories have been stewing in the queue for quite a while, so hold your nose.
MoMath is open!
On the twelfth of the twelfth of the twenty-twelfth, New York’s Museum of Mathematics had its big opening gala. George Hart, who has spent the past few years developing the stuff that would go in the museum, recorded a video in between schmoozing the museum’s first guests to show off the things it contains.
[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7xPo1YXzY]
All I want for Christmas is a ticket to New York!
If you’re in the enviable position of being able to visit the museum, have a look at their website. It opens to the public tomorrow, the 15th.
If you’re like me and you can’t get to New York in the foreseeable, the MoMath YouTube channel has many videos of their Math Encounters series of workshops and presentations.