A survey of 3000 pupils aged from seven to 18 for City & Guilds is reported by the BBC to have found that “maths lessons are seen as difficult, irrelevant and boring by about a third of teenagers” and that the subject could be “geared more towards real life”, but that “most agreed that maths would be useful once they had left school”.
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The Aperiodcast – week of 23/4/2012
Here’s the very first edition of what we’ve cleverly decided to call The Aperiodcast. The plan is to record a short podcast every week or week-and-a-bit (this is the Aperiodical after all) talking about what’s been happening on the site, and pointing out posts that we found particularly interesting or have generated a lot of discussion.
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Math/Maths 94: Broadcasting From A Hollowed Out Volcano
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: Alan Turing papers on code breaking released by GCHQ; Biography by Turing's mother republished; Bletchley Park to host Loebner Prize competition; How the universe began; Biodiversity model reliability; MathAlive; Volcanic eruptions and Benford's Law; New Careers section on Plus Magazine; QAMA Calculator now shipping; Harvard Library view on journal pricing; The Aperiodical launches; and more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 94: Broadcasting From A Hollowed Out Volcano
Model predicts prevalence of left-handedness in sports populations
Research has been published describing a mathematical model that successfully predicts the ratios of left-handers to right-handers in different sports.
2012 Loebner Prize to be held at Bletchley Park & streamed online
The 2012 Loebner Prize competition (based on the Turing test) will be held at Bletchley Park. A Bletchley Park Trust press release explains the competition procedure:
The judges at the competition will conduct conversations with the four finalist chatbots and with some human surrogates, and will then rank all their conversation partners from most humanlike to least humanlike. The chatbot with the highest overall ranking wins the prize [a bronze medal and $7,000].
The competition will take place on 15 May 2012, starting at 1:00pm. Visitors to the Park will be able to follow the conversations on screens in the Mansion and these will also be streamed live online for the first time.
Carnival of Mathematics 86 submissions are due
The next Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly blogging round up hosted by a different blog each month and coordinated by The Aperiodical, will be hosted at The Math Less Travelled in May 2012. Submissions are due by Tuesday so please consider any blog posts either you have written or you have enjoyed on another blog this month and submit them to the Carnival.
New Careers section on Plus Magazine
Plus Magazine have launched a new careers section. Aimed at teachers, students, career advisors and parents, the section offers a glimpse of where maths can take you. For a long time these have been the best sources of careers advice for mathematics in the UK so a collaboration should be very fruitful.
This gives information on the wide range of careers that use mathematics – from avalanche research and planning the Olympics to designing computer games or saving lives in developing countries – containing career profiles and in-depth career interviews, as well as advice from employers and information on how to enter a career with maths.
The new careers section is a collaboration between Plus and the MathsCareers website, which was developed by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the London Mathematical Society and the Royal Statistical Society.