### Elwyn Berlekamp has left us

In memory of Elwyn Berlekamp, who passed away on 9th April, Colin Wright has shared with us this post from his blog.

I remember meeting Elwyn Berlekamp.

### Scientists call for an end to statistical significance

A group of over 800 scientists have signed their names to an article published in Nature, explaining why statistical significance shouldn’t be relied on so heavily as a measure of the success of an experiment. We asked statistics buff Andrew Steele to explain.

### realhats: Writing a $\LaTeX$ Package

A few months ago, Adam Townsend went to lunch and had a conversation. I wasn’t there, but I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Smitha: Hello.
Smitha: You know how the \hat command in LaTeΧ puts a caret above a letter?… Well I was thinking it would be funny if someone made a package that made the \hat command put a picture of an actual hat on the symbol instead?
Adam: (After a few hours of laughter.) I’ll see what my flatmate is up to this weekend…
Jeff: What on Earth are you two talking about?!

As anyone who has been anywhere near maths at a university in the last ∞ years will be able to tell you, LaTeΧ (or $\LaTeX$) is a piece of maths typesetting software. It’s a bit like a version of Word that runs in terminal and makes PDFs with really pretty equations.

By default, LaTeΧ can’t do very much, but features can easily added by importing packages: importing the graphicsx package allows you to put images in your PDF; importing geometry allows you to easily change the page margins; and importing realhats makes the \hat command put real hats above symbols.

### Buzz in when you think you know the answer

Aperiodical guest author Andrew Taylor writes about an intriguing piece of number theory which turns out to also be something else.

How many ways are there of writing some natural number $n$ as the sum of two squares?

$$n = p^2 + q^2$$

I don’t want an answer for some particular $n$. I don’t even want a general formula. I just want to know… on average.

### Many-to-many Shape Sorter

Did you like playing with shape sorters as a toddler, but find them too simple as an adult? Well, I’ve got good news for you.

### Making Tricurves

Tim Lexen has written a series of posts on the topic of Tricurves: Bending the Law of Sines, Combining Tricurves and Phantom Tiling. In this latest post, Tim has been working with our own Katie Steckles to turn Tricurves into real objects to play with.

When you discover an interesting mathematical shape or object, there’s a strong instinct to play with it – maybe by drawing sketches and doodles to test the limits of the idea. But in the case of Tricurves, drawing an accurate shape takes a little time, and it doesn’t lend itself well to idle experimentation.

Producing a physical version of a shape, in enough quantity to allow for experimentation, makes it much more tangible. In our own respective locations, we’ve each made use of laser cutting facilities to produce wooden Tricurve tiles to play with, and we encourage you to join in.

### Euler in maths and engineering

Inspired by Katherine Johnson’s character in the film Hidden Figures and her use of Euler’s Method, engineer Natalie-Claire Luwisha has written this guest post about Euler’s contribution to engineering.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hidden Figures because of the overall message and inspiration it generated for all women, especially women of colour. Even today in the 21st century, most of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) industries still have a very low percentage of women and even fewer women of colour. One major factor in this is the lack of visible role models for young girls and women to aspire to, so this story based on real-life events was ideal to help tackle the issue.