Right, let’s be havin’ ya! My name’s Christian Perfect, I’ve got some links, and you’ve got some eyes. Aperiodical Round Up 8, arriving later than scheduled at Platform Your Face.
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Puzzlebomb – January 2013
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 13 of Puzzlebomb, for January 2013, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 13 – January 2013
The solutions to Issue 13 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 13 – January 2013 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Mathematical Christmas Cracker Jokes
At this time of year, terrible and/or groan-worthy jokes come to the fore, and are completely acceptable, and in some cases encouraged, provided they’re preceded by a bang noise and read out from a tiny piece of paper.
Rummaging around on my computer today, I found a set of mathematical Christmas cracker jokes I wrote for a party thrown for a group of mathematicians a couple of years ago, where I hacked apart a set of crackers and replaced the toys with tiny slide rules, the paper hats with ones cut into fractal curves along the top, and the existing awful jokes with awful mathematical ones. I thought I’d share them with you all, since they’re more likely to be appreciated by maths fans.
Can you do long division? And other questions we’d like answers to.
Do you know how to do long division? I don’t. Prompted by an annoying article I saw, I’d like to know how many people do know how to do long division.
So this is as good an opportunity as any to use a side-project I’ve been working on recently, which I’ve called The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey. I’ve asked quite a few questions like the above here or on Twitter, so I thought it would be a good idea to do something systematic about collecting answers to them.
At the moment, I’ve put up a few questions that occurred to me off the top of my head, such as what’s your favourite number?, how do you write the letter $x$?, and of course, can you do long division?
I hope that if I leave the site running long enough, people will drop in and answer questions every now and then. If we get enough answers I’ll do some Science on the responses, otherwise I’ll just have to do some uninformed Punditry instead.
Please go to The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey site and answer a question or two.
Deck the halls with τ of holly, formula-la-laaa!
Christmas is a time for giving, celebrating, family and magic. But did you know it’s also a time for equations? Department store Debenhams has decided to honour this recent Christmas tradition by tasking at least two members of Sheffield University’s undergraduate maths society to come up with formulae for ‘a perfectly decorated Christmas tree‘, picked up by The Sun, The Metro and others.
![Christmas Tree Christmas Tree](http://aperiodical.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ChristmasTree.jpg)
Photo by Aleksandar Cocek, used under a Creative Commons licence.
Previous festive howlers include ‘the formula for the perfect family Christmas‘ (sponsored by The Children’s Society to promote a book) and a prior stab at ‘the equation for the ideal Christmas tree‘ (sponsored by B&Q), which are just nonsensical strings of abbreviations. However, unlike those examples of naff-ematics, the Sheffield tree-decorating equations make enough sense for me to take a critical, overly-serious look at them on their own merits, and show how you might begin to come up with something more rational.
Podcasting update
I have a job. This is not the podcasting update, but it does affect it! If you have listened to the latest Math/Maths Podcast you will know that I will be lecturing mathematics from January while trying to finish my PhD thesis, and that we will be putting that podcast on hiatus while I do so. This means no more talking to Samuel Hansen for at least six months.
There is something you can do to fill this mathematical podcasting gap, however. Samuel is trying to raise money through a Kickstarter to allow him upgrade his equipment and improve the quality, to pay for the travel to conduct face-to-face interviews and to make this his full-time job so he can concentrate on a regular release schedule, for his work in maths (math) and science communication over at ACMEScience.com.
At Kickstarter, Samuel says:
ACMEScience.com has spent the last four years trying to do something that very few others have ever attempted, create entertaining, insightful, and interesting content about mathematics and science. Started by Samuel Hansen in the beginning of 2009, ACMEScience has produced a pop-culture joke filled mathematical panel show, Combinations and Permutations, a show that interviews everyone from the CEO of a stats driven dating site to a stand up mathematician to Neil deGrasse Tyson, Strongly Connected Components, a show that tells the stories of the fights that behind DNA, dinosaurs, and the shape of the universe, Science Sparring Society, a video interview show that has featured predatory bacteria and crowdsourced questions, ACMEScience News Now, and a series of hour long journeys into the world of competitive AI checkers computers and stories of the most interesting 20th C mathematician and much more, Relatively Prime.
You may remember that Samuel raised money through a Kickstarter before, for the extremely well-received documentary series Relatively Prime. So you might judge this as evidence that he is capable of delivering this project. However, you may also remember that if he doesn’t raise the whole amount he needs then he gets nothing.
There are various pledge levels, with various rewards. Some of these are aimed at the individual who wants to own a piece of the project. Others are aimed at people who want to sponsor/advertise via the shows and get their message out there. Looking at the level of pledges so far, Samuel could really do with a few companies or individuals who want to get a message out to a mathematics or science audience coming forward and pledging some money. Relatively Prime was very well listened to, and you could get your message to a large, focused, engaged set of listeners.
There is not long to go (only four days at time of writing) and it doesn’t look good. So please pitch in and also tell everyone you know via your own blog/podcast/social networks/etc. so that others will support his effort.
Here is the video in which Samuel makes his case. It’s six minutes so at least watch that! The Kickstarter page is ACMEScience.com by Samuel Hansen. Donating is easy through Amazon payments.
Videos from MathsJam 2012
While we were at the big MathsJam conference a few weekends ago, we took the opportunity to point a camera in people’s faces and ask them to tell us something interesting. Because of the high quality of MathsJam attendees, this went better than it would in most other contexts.
Here’s a collection of clips we recorded while people were digesting both their dinners and the first day’s talks.
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_IeC1M5D4]