The table never lies, or so they say. So when Manchester City were crowned Premier League Champions last week everyone seemed to agree that they were the best team in the league. As Roberto Mancini said, they had scored more than United and conceded less and beaten them twice in the league. Although United finished on the same number of points it would be difficult to find a measure by which they deserved the title over City. Or would it?
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Like everybody else, you too can be unique. Just keep shuffling
The first take-home lesson of this note is that you too can be unique. You’ll have to keep shuffling to get there, but it is an attainable goal.
Several years ago it dawned on me that the number of possible ways to order or permute the cards in a standard deck of size $52$ was inconceivably large. Of course it was — and still is — $52!$. That’s easy enough to scribble down (or even surpass spectacularly) without understanding just how far we are from familiar territory.
Open Access Update – 25th of May
The campaign to make access to scholarly literature fairer and broader has been picking up steam and moving quite quickly lately, so I thought it would be a good idea to collect the recent news about open access, the Elsevier boycott, and so on, all in one place.
To help you catch up with the story so far, the Guardian have published a (free) roundup of content on the “Academic Spring”.
Aperiodical Round Up 6 – It glides to a stop as it reaches the end of the power stroke
Hello. I’m Christian Perfect and it’s finally here: Aperiodical Round Up 6!
It’s certainly been a while since the last Round Up. You might not even have the words to describe just how long it’s been. Maybe the book Naming Infinity will help.
Matt Parker’s Twitter Puzzle: 25th May
Matt Parker (@standupmaths on Twitter) has tweeted the following Maths Puzzle, to wake you up:
Friday morning #MathsPuzzle! If you start the Fibonacci sequence 2,1 instead of 1,1 do you get more or fewer primes? (Check the first ten.)
— Matt Parker (@standupmaths) May 25, 2012
No spoilers in the comments! Send your replies to Matt on Twitter.
Caten by David Letellier
[vimeo url=https://vimeo.com/42582062]
Linear Programming: problem solving starting point
You may recall that a while ago I wrote about Picture this!, an interactive problem/puzzle developed by one of our supported projects at work. Now the same group have developed a problem solving ‘starting point’ on linear programming.
The problem pits you as a toy manufacturer producing wooden dolls and trains, with a limited number of carpentry hours available per day. You are invited to consider questions around how many of each object can be produced and what can be done to optimise profit.
Two more interactive problem starting points will be ready in due course but for now please try this one and, importantly, provide feedback.
Important: Once you have played with the virtual problem solving environment, please fill out this survey from the researchers. The researchers have said to me that they are happy for the page to be public and hope that anyone who uses it will fill out the survey. Doing so, you will help the researchers discover whether the use of this software to present problems is worthwhile and beneficial. The survey asks if you are a student or a tutor. If you choose “student” you will be asked about your use of the simulation and your understanding of the underlying mathematics. If you choose “tutor” (or leave the question blank) you will be asked about how you used it with undergraduate students.
This project seeks to produce “a virtual problem solving environment which hosts problems suitable for a range of undergraduate mathematics courses“. If you want to find out more about this project then you can read the interim report from this project over on my work blog.