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HLF Blogs: The numbers behind the young researchers – 2018

By Katie Steckles and Paul Taylor. Posted October 17, 2018

Last month, Katie and Paul spent a week blogging from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum – a week-long maths conference where current young researchers in maths and computer science can meet and hear talks by top-level prize-winning researchers. For more information about the HLF, visit the Heidelberg Laureate Forum website.

Photo: Bernhard Kreutzer for HLF

For the Wednesday afternoon of HLF, the entire conference gets on a (very large) boat and heads off for a gentle cruise down the river, drink in hand and ready to enjoy the scenery. The young researchers, along with the Laureates and the rest of us, are effectively trapped on the boat for a few hours – so just like last year, we took the opportunity to corner some of the PhD and postgrad students and ask them about their research – and the numbers they find central to their work.

HLF Blogs: Leslie Lamport Thinks Your Code Is Bad

By Paul Taylor. Posted September 27, 2018

This week, Katie and Paul are blogging from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum – a week-long maths conference where current young researchers in maths and computer science can meet and hear talks by top-level prize-winning researchers. For more information about the HLF, visit the Heidelberg Laureate Forum website.

Image: Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation / © Bernhard Kreutzer

At last year’s HLF, Turing Award Leslie Lamport gave us his (not wholly complimentary) thoughts on the state of proof-writing in mathematics. Since he has worked in both maths and computer science, members of the latter discipline may have felt they got off quite lightly. Perhaps to redress the balance, this year we found out what he thinks is wrong with most people’s code and algorithms, in a talk titled If You’re Not Writing a Program, Don’t Use a Programming Language.

Atiyah-Riemann Proof: banter summary

By Katie Steckles and Paul Taylor. Posted September 24, 2018

Today the internet has been getting excited about Sir Michael Atiyah’s claimed proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, which he presented at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum this morning. We’ve collected all the relevant links and tweets to help you make sense of what’s going down in critical-line-town.

HLF Blogs: What is the Riemann Hypothesis?

By Katie Steckles and Paul Taylor. Posted September 23, 2018

This year at the HLF there are multiple sessions in the program concerning the Riemann Hypothesis, including a talk from one of the laureates, and one of the young-researcher-led workshop sessions. But what exactly is the Riemann Hypothesis, and what is its place in mathematics?

Carnival of Mathematics 158

By Paul Taylor. Posted June 10, 2018

This is the 158th Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly round-up of interesting maths bits from across the internet. Convention dictates that I now therefore specify some interesting facts about the number 158. Unfortunately I am writing this on a train with no internet access, which will make fulfilling this obligation more than usually challenging.

Measuring π with a pendulum

By Paul Taylor. Posted October 12, 2017

Matt Parker approximating pi using a pie

Friends of the Aperiodical, nerd-comedy troupe Festival of the Spoken Nerd, are currently on tour around the UK. As part of their show, questionably titled You Can’t Polish a Nerd, Matt Parker attempts to calculate the value of $\pi$ using only a length of string and some meat encased in pastry. He’s previously done this on YouTube, and the idea was inspired by the Aperiodical’s 2015 Pi Approximation Challenge, and in particular my own attempt to approximate $\pi$ with a (more conventional) pendulum.

HLF Blogs – The numbers behind the young researchers

By Paul Taylor and Katie Steckles. Posted September 30, 2017

The view on the boat deck – plenty of young researchers to corner!

Having extensively covered the talks and press conferences of the Laureates so far, we thought it was time to talk to some of the Young Researchers at this year’s HLF about the work they’re doing.