We all know mathematicians are the coolest people on the planet. But it turns out that of all the people not on the planet, all of them are in fact either mathematicians, or have mathematical backgrounds or training. Astronauts – and Russian cosmonauts – are all super mathsy people, and if they weren’t already awesome enough, this really seals the deal for me.
You're reading: Posts By Katie Steckles
Alexandre Grothendieck’s notes archive to be released online
News from France, where the family of the late Alexandre Grothendieck, legend of basically all maths, have finally reached an agreement with the academic community about his huge archive of written notes. Discussions have been ongoing for a while but it’s finally been agreed that the notes can be released online for the community at large to take advantage of.
The notes comprise over 100,000 pages of mathematics, diagrams and letters to collaborators, and an initial chunk of over 18,000 pages will be online from 10th May on the University of Montpellier’s website. It’s expected that many undiscovered mathematical treasures might be found within, although the challenge of reading through and deciphering it all may take a Polymath-style mass effort.
More information
The notes of the mathematician Alexandre Grothendieck arrive on the net, at Libération (in French)
Carnival of Mathematics 145
Welcome to the 145th Carnival of Mathematics, hosted here at The Aperiodical.
If you’re not familiar with the Carnival of Mathematics, it’s a monthly blog post, hosted on some kind volunteer’s maths blog, rounding up their favourite mathematical blog posts (and submissions they’ve received through our form) from the past month, ish. If you think you’d like to host one on your blog, simply drop an email to katie@aperiodical.com and we can find an upcoming month you can do. On to the Carnival!
Video: How to draw an egg
Katie’s done another video! This time it’s a neat method for constructing an egg-shape, using arcs of circles.
Bonus challenge: See if you can count how many times Katie accidentally says ‘compass’ instead of ‘pair of compasses’ during the video.
Carnival of Mathematics 144
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of March, and compiled by Frederick, is now online at White Group Mathematics.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Video: New mathematical card trick
I’ve done another maths video! If you missed it earlier this week, here’s a nice mathematical card trick I learned recently on a trip to Finland. Enjoy!
Cutting an oval pizza – video
As if there wasn’t enough maths/pizza news lately, the story has hit the red-tops recently that UK supermarkets are scamming consumers by offering them oval-shaped pizzas – marketed in the high-end/’Extra Special’ ranges, with more expensive (sounding) ingredients like mozzarella di bufala, roquito peppers and merguez sausage, and a distinctive pair of artisanally different radii. These pizzas apparently cost more per gram, because their elliptical shape means they’re actually smaller than a circle with the same diameter. Cue plenty of ‘costing you dough’ and ‘cheesed off’ puns.
While we’re not massively bothered by the pricing, the articles do raise, and then completely fail to address, an interesting point: an oval pizza is harder to cut into equally sized pieces! Luckily, maths is here to save the day. I found a nice method and made a video explaining how it works:
Take a look and improve your future pizza cutting technique!