Terence Tao has just uploaded a preprint to the arXiv with a claimed proof of the Erdős discrepancy problem.
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New issue of MSOR Connections, I’m an editor
I am now one of the editors of MSOR Connections, a peer-reviewed practitioner journal that welcomes research articles, case studies and opinion pieces relating to innovative learning, teaching, assessment and support in mathematics, statistics and operational research in higher education.
Puzzlebomb – September 2015
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 45 of Puzzlebomb, for September 2015, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 45 – September 2015
The solutions to Issue 45 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 45 – September 2015 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Maths helps maths graduates get professional jobs
The Destination of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE, pronounced ‘deli’) survey sends a questionnaire to all UK university graduates six months after graduation and this gives some idea of what happens to students once they graduate. It is flawed, but has a high response rate and is an interesting tool.
There is a second type of DLHE survey, which is longitudinal. This surveys graduates 3.5 years after graduation, and the 2010/11 longitudinal data has just been released. This deserves some investigation and I don’t have time right now, but I did notice a couple of tables that make me proud of my subject.
New York Times puzzle is pure game theory
The Upshot is a column in the New York Times based around analytics, data and graphics. (It was conceived around the time when Nate Silver left to work for ESPN). Earlier this week, managing editor David Leonhardt and data journalist Kevin Quealy posted an interesting puzzle, entitled ‘Are You Smarter Than 49,485 other New York Times Readers?’
The puzzle consists of a simple question – you need to pick a number between 0 and 100, and all 49,485 of the responses will be collated (assuming that every single one of the Times’ readership actually enters a number) and averaged. If your guess turns out to be the closest whole number to two-thirds of the average guess, you are clever and you win.
New pentagonal tiling discovered
If you’re into tilings, or just looking to redo your bathroom in the most modern way possible, there’s big news. A team of researchers at the University of Washington-Bothell have discovered a previously unknown way to tile a plane using irregular pentagons.
Given any Delta, there exists Epsilon
At the end of an overnight flight from San Francisco to New York is hardly the ideal time to play “I Spy Mathematics” on a packed airplane. We were all grumpy and groggy from four scant hours of sleep. It seemed that nobody had watched any films en route and, like most of the other passengers, I didn’t have headphones or earplugs to hand.
Clearly there was no point in scanning the entertainment offerings with just 15 minutes to landing. But then I remembered spotting an ad on screen for The Great Courses as I’d settled into my seat in San Francisco. Was it possible that I’d blown a chance to watch Art Benjamin, David Bressoud, Judith Grabiner, David Kung, James Sellers or Mike Starbird in action? I decided to try to find out.