I am interviewed about my PhD research and my experience of the viva in the new episode of the Viva Survivors podcast. This podcast, by Nathan Ryder (@DrRyder), interviews PhD graduates about their research, the viva and life afterwards.
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Carnival of Mathematics 109
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of March, and compiled by Tony Mann, is now online at Tony’s Maths 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.
Puzzlebomb – April 2014
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 28 of Puzzlebomb, for April 2014, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 28 – April 2014
The solutions to Issue 28 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 28 – April 2014 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Guesting on the ‘Wrong, But Useful’ first anniversary episode
You may recall that Samuel Hansen and I used to have a weekly conversation about mathematics in the news and news in mathematics, which we called the Math/Maths Podcast and released through the (still going!) science communication project Pulse-Project. When we put Math/Maths on hiatus (the length of which is still an open question), this left a gap in the lucrative ‘two blokes talking about maths-y stuff’ market. Leaping on the opportunity, plucky young podcasters Colin Beveridge and Dave Gale started Wrong, But Useful (as you may recall from a previous post here). Well, that was a year ago now and, as creatures whose outlook is tied to this planet, that is apparently worth celebrating. Through a careful constructed mock-feud, Colin and Dave reeled in first Samuel and then me to join them in an anniversary recording.
James Grime’s house-building problem
Aperiodipal James Grime has put a new video on his YouTube channel. He’s got a problem to do with building houses:
But James posts fantastic videos about maths puzzles all the time; what’s so notable about this one?
I was involved, that’s what! The puzzle can be done on pen and paper but it involves a lot of drawing and calculating, so James asked if anyone could make a computery version. I spent my day off work last week making just such a thing: the computerised Building Houses Problem.
Everyone’s a mathematician
This morning Katie and I had a little discussion about house style on The Aperiodical. Mathematican Paul Taylor was listed as “Mathematician Paul Taylor” in the blurb for his featured post. I posited that everyone published here is a mathematician, so the “Mathematician” title is redundant.
This of course resulted in me writing a userscript which automatically prepends every name on the page with the honorific “Mathematician”.
Integer sequence review: A193430
The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences contains over 200,000 sequences. It contains classics, curios, thousands of derivatives entered purely for completeness’s sake, short sequences whose completion would be a huge mathematical achievement, and some entries which are just downright silly.
For a lark, David and I have decided to review some of the Encyclopedia’s sequences. We’re rating sequences on four axes: Novelty, Aesthetics, Explicability and Completeness.
This is the triumphant return of the integer sequence reviews!
A193430
Primes p such that p+1 is in A055462.23, 6911, 5944066965503999, ...