Here are some nice number facts and tricks you can try out on your friends. They will work without understanding how, but with a little investigation you should be able to figure out how each one works.
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All Squared, Number 5: Favourite maths books (part 1)
Good maths books are simultaneously plentiful and rare. While there are a few classics almost everyone knows about and has copies of (Gardner, Hardy, etc.), the trade in lesser-known maths books is considerably less well-organised. Very few bookshops have well-stocked maths sections, and insipid pop maths books dominate. Unless you hear about a good maths book through word of mouth, you’ll often only encounter it once it’s ended up in a second-hand bookshop, usually a refugee from an emptied maths department library.
But books, more than anything else, are where the beauty of maths really manifests itself. It’s where ideas are presented most clearly, after they’ve had time to percolate through a few more brains. We talked to David Singmaster, professor of maths and metagrobologist, about his favourite maths books.
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Carnival of Mathematics 98
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of April, is now online at Andrew Taylor’s blog.
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.
Monthly MathsJams – November 2012 Survey Data
Those of you with long, long memories (and who attend a MathsJam) may recall that back in November 2012, MathsJam HQ sent out a questionnaire to monthly regional meetups, with various questions about attendance and ping-pong balls. The purpose of the survey was to get a snapshot of what the monthly MathsJams are like, as well as to produce some spurious graphs. Christian and I, who run the Newcastle and Manchester MathsJams respectively, were tasked with analysing the data. Here are our findings!
Here’s How Little I See Your Point
You may have seen an article linked to last week, written by Jordan Weissmann at The Atlantic. The article was titled ‘Here’s How Little Math Americans Actually Use At Work‘, although mysteriously this journalist makes use of some mathematical analysis of survey data, and not only that, the data appears to show that 94% of Americans claim to use mathematics as part of their daily job.
The article discusses people’s misconceptions about the future utility of what they were learning, as well as the divide between using ‘any math’ and ‘advanced math’, which includes calculus, algebra and statistics. The number of Americans who admitted to using this type of maths appears to drop off once you get to anything more complicated than fractions, and also presented is an analysis of this divide by job type.
A very well-written and thoughtful response to this has already been posted at mathematics professor Bret Benesh’s blog, which gives four reasons why the article annoyed him (and probably several other people too).
Seeking election-themed graph blunders
Since we’d like to write a funny post about it, if you’ve been sent any literature for the upcoming local elections in the UK (or indeed, from the past or from other elections around the world) which contains a graph or chart of questionable rigor, we want to know about it.
As an example, Colin Beveridge sent us this classic from his doormat:
We’ll be awarding bonus points for inaccurate pie charts, exaggerated/meaningless bar sizes, the complete absence of axis label or scale, the use of ‘Can’t win here!’ and any other sneaky/incompetent features. Email your submissions to root@aperiodical.com, and watch out for a roundup post if we collect a sizeable pile.
Puzzlebomb – May 2013
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 17 of Puzzlebomb, for May 2013, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 17 – May 2013
The solutions to Issue 17 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 17 – May 2013 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.