Since all the cool kids are using Twitter these days, this is the first in a sporadic series of Twitter recommendation posts which will tend to take place on Fridays. If you’re not on Twitter, feel free to use this as a source of interesting facts and links, but if you are, I’ll post tweets here from users I think it’s worth following (with associated qualifications).
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I told you so: Relatively Prime has begun
Do you remember when I told you why I supported Relatively Prime and you should too? I said:
Samuel is an enthusiastic communicator of mathematics and has the technical skills to make an excellent producer of content. You may have enjoyed what he does as my co-host on the Math/Maths Podcast, or his interview show Strongly Connected Components, or his irreverent maths chat show Combinations and Permutations. Much as these are good outputs, they all have an element of being as good as they be in spare time. I don’t know about you, but of the two options on his crossroads I would like to live in a world where Samuel can take his enthusiasm and technical expertise and spend some serious time concerning himself with mathematics communication.
Well, now is my chance to say “I told you so”. Following that amazing day when I told you that next time you wake up, Relatively Prime will be a missed opportunity unless you act, 159 people donated to make the project a reality and Samuel has spent 11 months doing the work: travelling the world, recording interviews and editing (so much editing).
Now he has released the first episode of this eight-part audio documentary series. And it’s good!
The Toolbox
The mathematics that we all learn in school is great. No, really, it is. How can anyone get through life without knowing how to add or subtract. Multiply or divide. Solve for an unknown or factor a polynomial. OK, you might be able to get through life without that last one, but the point still stands, the mathematics that we all learn in school is great. It isn’t everything though. There are a lot of other tools that mathematics has to offer that could enrich people’s lives. On this episode Samuel Hansen rummages through his mathematical tool box and showcases three tools he feel are going to be very important in the coming years.
The series will run until 5th November, with a new episode being released every Monday. (And I hear the completion of his achievement will be marked with national fireworks.) The show is available to download directly at the show’s website, but don’t forget to subscribe through iTunes or through the RSS Feed.
Plus it’s a chance to check how well he stuck to those hints he gave about Relatively Prime content, and tease him about the inevitable changes of plan!
Relatively Prime, All in a Name
“Prime. Prime? Prime! Prime factors, twin primes, pseudo-primes? No, no no. Relatively Prime? Yes, Relatively Prime.”
I have a problem, no matter how good an idea I have I can not start to work on it until I have a name. Some names are easy, Combination and Permutations was a name well before I ever had a show to use it, Science Sparring Society followed directly from the concept, and ACMEScience NEWS NOW actually told me what type of show I would be making. Other names are hard.
I had the underlying idea for Relatively Prime (get the first episode here) in an extreme bout of egotism and delusion of grandeur where I spent too long listening to Radio Lab, This American Life, and Snap Judgment and began to think, “Hey, I could do that, but for math.”
To teach, must I principally research?
A couple of weeks ago at the HE STEM Conference I saw a keynote lecture by Sir Alan Langlands, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. During a questions session following this, I was surprised to be handed the microphone but apparently I had raised my hand. I asked a question. Quite a number of people approached me during the remaining day-and-a-half of the conference to say what a good question it had been so I thought I would share it here.
Sir Alan had spoken about the challenges facing STEM in HE and about the legacy of the National HE STEM Programme. On the latter, reflecting the hope that much of the HE STEM activity will develop into ongoing practice in universities, he said he hoped we wouldn’t think of this as the end but as a beginning. He also spoke about challenges affecting the sector in terms of Goverment initiatives and other factors, and the important of teaching and learning, research, etc. When I was handed the microphone I said into this something like the following.
I was interested that you spoke about looking to the future. I work for a former Higher Education Academy Subject Centre on a project funded by the National HE STEM Programme. So my contract ends tomorrow1. I aspire to being a lecturer who takes a professional research interest in his teaching but almost every job advert I read has number 1 ‘a PhD in mathematics’ and number 2 ‘ability to bring in research income’. So, while I shouldn’t ask such a personal question, I suppose I’m asking: should I acquire a research topic or plan a different career?
I’m afraid that extreme nervousness has made what happened next a bit of a blur. I certainly don’t feel like I got a satisfactory answer and several of the people who congratulated me on my question said as much to me. Perhaps someone who was there will be able to fill in more of the details via the comments.
He, quite rightly, addressed the general point rather than my specific circumstances. He certainly spoke about some universities increasingly making available career routes – both hiring new people and allowing for promotion – based on merit attached to teaching activities, and suggested that I might need to ‘shop around’ to find an institution to suit me. This is true, in that I aware of departments more friendly to my aims and I sometimes meet people who are employed as Teaching Fellows or similar who talk of promotion possibilities linked to teaching achievements. However, the norm is still to hire a researcher who, begrudgingly, indifferently or happily, is required to teach as a secondary objective. This is what I was getting at with my job advert for the University of Excellence.
I should be clear that I am not against mathematical research in any way. It’s just that I am drawn to the challenge of helping people to understand something about mathematics and its applications, and I feel that people who are willing to spend their time and energy on better teaching, outreach, educational research, etc. should have a more prominent place in the system.
1. These are both programmes formally funded by HEFCE so really I was making an unfair swipe here. I hope it didn’t make me seem too much the disgruntled ex-employee but I was a little frustrated at the suggestion that the expiry of the funding for my employment should be viewed as an exciting new beginning.
Carnival of Mathematics 90
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of August, is now online at Walking Randomly.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. For more information about the Carnival of Mathematics, click here.
Puzzlebomb – September 2012
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 9 of Puzzlebomb, for September 2012, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 9 – September 2012
The solutions to Issue 9 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 9 – September 2012 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Knitting Escher patterns
Following on from our maths/knitting post earlier this month, we’ve found a knitting blog full of knitted MC Escher designs. The famously mathematical graphic artist MC Escher was king of tessellating designs with repeated fish, birds and other animals.
Jana, who writes the blog in question, has taken on the formidable challenge of writing knitting patterns for a variety of different Escher designs and not without a deal of success. The designs are all hand-knitted and are ridiculously intricate: while some are made from separate shapes stitched together, there are some which are knit in rows with two colours, using a pattern of her own design. Much maths and knitting respect is due.
All posts on her site tagged with ‘Escher’ can be found here; particularly noteworthy are a blanket with a fish design, and some beautiful cushions.
(via Rudy Rucker and Edmund Harris on Twitter)