Every August a multitude of comedy shows, theatre pieces, interpretive dance performances, musical extravaganzas and spoken word events spring up all over the Edinburgh Fringe. As a busy mathematician (there are infinitely many integers; who has spare time?) I’m sure you’ll appreciate our guide to which of those things are mathematical, or have a tangential (LOL) relationship with mathematics. Please note: none of these are recommendations, as we haven’t seen the shows and mainly have been grepping the word ‘maths’ in online programmes.
You're reading: Columns
- Italian recreational mathematican Maurizio Codogno adds some historical context to the problem then posts about how the question as posed provides lots of help.
- La Repubblica gives a round-up of the tough questions in all this year’s exams.
- Il Corriere della Sera offers some takes on the question from experts and Twitter.
- Mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi gives a brief description of how a square-wheeled bicycle works, with lots of discussion in the comments section.
- The Rudi Mathematici post about the question on their blog. They also have an e-zine. Yes, they have an h on their main site but not on their blog. (They write the recreational maths column in the Italian edition of Scientific American.)
- Finally, a thread on it.scienza.matematica picks apart the question a bit more pedantically.
Carnival of Mathematics 147
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of June, and compiled by Lucy, is now online at Cambridge Mathematics.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Square wheels in an Italian maths exam
There have been various stories in the Italian press and discussion on a Physics teaching mailing list I’m accidentally on about a question in the maths exam for science high schools in Italy last week.
The paper appears to be online.
(Ed. – Here’s a copy of the first part of this four-part question, reproduced for the purposes of criticism and comment)
The question asks students to confirm that a given formula is the shape of the surface needed for a comfortable ride on a bike with square wheels. (Asking what the formula was with no hints would clearly have been harder.) It then asks what shape of polygon would work on another given surface.
What do people think? Would this be a surprising question at A-level in the UK or in the final year of high school in the US or elsewhere? Of course, I don’t know how similar this question might be to anything in the syllabus in licei scientifici.
The following links give a flavour of the reaction to the question:
6 hours, 1 question out of 2 in section 1, 5 out of 10 in section 2. My own initial reaction is that if I had to do this exam right now I’d do question 2 in section 1 but I’ve not actually attempted question 1 yet.
The curious mathmo talks to David Roberts
Way back at the end of last year I put out a call to mathematicians I know: hop on Skype and chat to me for a while about the work you’re doing at the moment. The first person to answer was David Roberts, a pure mathematician from Adelaide.
We had a fascinating talk about one thread of David’s current work, which involves all sorts of objects I know no more about than their names. I had intended to release this as a podcast, but the quality of my recording was very poor and it turns out I’m terrible at audio editing, so instead here’s a transcription. Assume all mistakes are mine, not David’s.
If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to work in the far reaches of really abstract maths, this is an excellent glimpse of it.
DR: I’m David Roberts, I’m a pure mathematician, currently between jobs. I work – as far as research goes – generally on geometry and category theory, and the interplay between those two. And also a little bit of logic stuff, which I thought I’d talk about.
Carnival of Mathematics 146
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of May, and compiled by Peter, is now online at his blog.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Everyone’s A Mathematician – Astronauts
We all know mathematicians are the coolest people on the planet. But it turns out that of all the people not on the planet, all of them are in fact either mathematicians, or have mathematical backgrounds or training. Astronauts – and Russian cosmonauts – are all super mathsy people, and if they weren’t already awesome enough, this really seals the deal for me.
We want your best #proofinatoot on mathstodon.xyz
Mastodon is a new social network, heavily inspired by Twitter but with a few differences: tweets are called toots, it’s populated by tusksome mammals instead of little birds, and it’s designed to run in a decentralised manner – anyone can set up their own ‘instance’ and connect to everyone else using the GNU Social protocol.
Colin Wright and I both jumped on the bandwagon fairly early on, and realised it might be just the thing for mathematicians who want to be social: the 500 character limit leaves plenty of room for good thinkin’, and the open-source software means you can finally achieve the ultimate dream of maths on the web: LaTeX rendering!