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- Relatively Prime will be worth listening to.
Relatively Prime will be a series of eight hour long podcasts to tell stories from the world of mathematics by Samuel Hansen. Read Hints about Relatively Prime, where I have collected the hints Samuel has given about the stories he would like to tell. - Relatively Prime is different from all the mathematics podcasts you have ever heard.
Samuel’s ambition for this project goes beyond any amateur endeavour you are used to (I say this as an amateur podcaster). Listen to five minutes of me quizzing Samuel about the project. - If Relatively Prime doesn’t raise $8,000 it won’t happen.
As I write, 125 wonderful people and me have donated $5,448, which is really amazing but falls short of the target.
The way Kickstarter works, if Relatively Prime fails to achieve the $8,000 target IT GETS NOTHING. This isn’t a pledge-drive with a vague target – if Relatively Prime doesn’t reach its target it will fail.
As I write, Relatively Prime needs $2552 in the next 18 hours. Just looking at people who’ve clicked the bit.ly link (not those who’ve visited the link directly) there are currently 2,838 clicks. If they had all left a dollar Relatively Prime would be funded by now! - Supporting Relatively Prime is quick and easy.
Payment is through Amazon, so if you’ve used Amazon you don’t need to worry about giving another site your credit card details, and Amazon takes care of the currency exchange. - Relatively Prime is good for mathematics communication.
Samuel Hansen is a budding mathematics communicator. During his masters degree he has been engaged with such activities as the Strongly Connected Components mathematics interview show, the Combinations and Permutations comedic mathematics chat show, the Math/Maths Podcast news/current affairs show, the Math/Maths Week 2010 public lecture tour of the UK and the Math/Maths History Tour of Nottingham series of videos. Now he has graduated he is looking for his place in the world and Relatively Prime will give the world the opportunity to capture his enthusiasm and talent for the cause of mathematics communication.
You know how the Fields medal is awarded “in recognition of distinguished research but also to encourage further effort“? Well Relatively Prime is our opportunity to do the same for Samuel – to recognise his work and to encourage further effort from someone with potential.
It will also be good to think that we live in a world where good quality mathematics communication is valued. - Peter Rowlett: Why I supported Relatively Prime and you should too;
- Katie Steckles: Stories worth telling are… worth a few dollars, surely? ;
- Plus Magazine: Relatively Prime: stories from the mathematical domain;
- Dave Gale: I’m supporting Relatively Prime;
- Who’ve I missed? Oh, that must be enough to be going on with!
- Look at some of the things people have been saying on Twitter about this (no login required).
Echoes Reality 4D by Max Cooper
[vimeo url=https://vimeo.com/21228942]
Love and Tensor Algebra by Stanisław Lem
Relatively Prime is funded
Well, incredibly, Samuel Hansen has done it – Relatively Prime will be funded in six hours, having now crossed the minimum funding limit. (If you want your name on the list of funders you can still donate $5 by 11:13pm EDT and every little extra will help.)
Anyway, moments after the bid came in that pushed Relatively Prime over the magic $8,000 I spoke to Samuel, who broke through his shock to give a hearty thanks to everyone who had supported him. You can listen to this recording at acmescience.com as “Relatively Prime is Funded“:
So after a rather long wait everyone came through at the death and the ACMEScience Kickstarter project Relatively Prime got funded. I want to thank all of you who helped make this dream of mine a reality. Right after the pledge that knocked us over the edge happened I talked with my Math/Maths co-host Peter Rowlett to talk about how it felt. Listen to how happy I sound.
Next time you wake up, Relatively Prime will be a missed opportunity… unless you act! 5 key facts
This is the last opportunity you have to support Relatively Prime. Five key facts:
Reading list:
Here’s an indicator of progress:
Möbius Bracelet by miette
On communication and Google+
I am bad at communication. Here is what I have observed:
I reply well when messages are short, informal and don’t require much structure or thought. Emails with some people are easy, if I feel like we are on the same wavelength, can speak briefly and to the point, use shorthand we both understand etc. I reply quickly to Sam, my podcast collaborator, with whom I have email exchanges like: “Saturday?” “Yep.” “7pm my time?” “Sure.” Twitter also fits into this category. Short, informal messages with an interface that works well on my phone are easy to reply to.
I don’t reply well to more in depth messages. It’s not that I have a problem with writing in sentences and thinking complex thoughts, it’s mostly a question of immediacy. I can knock out a quick email easily on my phone on the bus, or as a quick aside to the piece of work I am really doing on my computer. If I have to think about a reply, it goes on my to do pile, which is a strange and disturbing realm from which nothing returns. Emails sink down my inbox screen with alarming speed. Following recent unavailability, I have fallen far behind. Work days at the moment are a struggle with the most urgent work while my undealt-with email pile is fast approaching 1000. (Will it self destruct when it reaches four digits?) Having such a large, looming unknown in my life is quite disconcerting. I hope the quiet summer will give me time to catch up.
Of course, when an issue is too big for a tweet and a twitterer changes to email, they discover the forgotten realm of my inbox. If it was too big for a tweet, it is too big for a short, quick email and I’ve added it to the pile. (This isn’t deliberate, and I’m annoyed with myself about it. But, you see, if I don’t sort out this thing by tomorrow I’m going to miss that deadline…)
Where does Facebook fit? I find Facebook annoying. People send private messages which are basically like long emails but appear in a different place so I can’t reply so easily. I don’t find it as easy to quickly dip in and read something interesting, or engage with someone’s quick message because the web interface has more junk going on and the service doesn’t work so nicely on my phone. I’m fed up of meeting people and having conversations like: “You know my
Into this picture steps Google+. Again I resisted the first attempts to get me on it but I’ve been using it for three weeks now. I sort of like it. I don’t have to worry about abbreviating myself to 140 characters like on Twitter but there is still an expectation of short, quick updates. I’m not constantly asked to play games and other stuff. And people can reply in a way that keeps the conversation together better than Twitter. Still, there’s something about it that isn’t quite clicking with me. It may be the lack of people on there, which will be fixed in time. I’m still not quite sure.
Looking for a place for Google+ in this mess of my online communications feels a bit like having a problem at one end and having a solution at the other and trying to fit the one to the other even though they don’t go together. Still, Christian Perfect suggested Google+ was a better place for conversations around the Math/Maths Podcast. I regularly ask on Twitter ‘What’s happened in your mathematical world this week?’ Christian is suggesting I could collect the replies more sensibly on Google+. Further than this, I wondered if I might put up one or two stories and see if anyone had any comments on them that I could collect that way.
So I’m going to give it a try. Take a look at this week’s messages on my Google+ page – one about The Code and maths communication, the other asking for news from your mathematical week. Now, I’m off to tweet that I put up a new blog post…