Caroline Ainslie has written in to tell us that she and her associates at Pyraloons are having another go at making the world’s largest Sierpiński tetrahedron… from balloons.
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Beautiful Science at the British Library
The British Library has an exhibition on at the moment that you might like to see.
Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight is all about data visualisation. Here’s the blurb:
Turning numbers into pictures that tell important stories and reveal the meaning held within is an essential part of what it means to be a scientist. This is as true in today’s era of genome sequencing and climate models as it was in the 19th century.
Beautiful Science explores how our understanding of ourselves and our planet has evolved alongside our ability to represent, graph and map the mass data of the time.
From John Snow’s plotting of the 1854 London cholera infections on a map to colourful depictions of the tree of life, discover how picturing scientific data provides new insight into our lives.
Beautiful Science is in the British Library’s Folio Society Gallery until the 26th of May and admission is free.
More information
Beautiful Science at the British Library.
By Napier’s bones! A new exhibition celebrating the inventor of logarithms
Put away your calculators – the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh has announced that it will host an exhibition all about John Napier to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of his treatise on logarithms, Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio.
Napier’s pioneering work on logarithms offered simple and elegant solutions to previously laborious and error-prone calculations; enabling more calculations to be completed in an hour than had previously been completed in one day. From the introduction of the decimal point to the development of slide rules and ‘Napier’s rods’, this exhibition will explore how Napier’s revolutionary innovations advanced and influenced mathematics from the 17th Century to the modern day.
Power of Ten will run from 28 March to 6 July, and entry is free.
More information
National Museums Scotland Exhibitions for 2014
John Napier to tax modern minds 400 years on, in The Scotsman
A translation of Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio by Ian Bruce
Event page at Edinburgh Napier University
via GHS Mathematics Department on Twitter
Persi Diaconis lecture: “The Magic of Martin Gardner”
The one and only Persi Diaconis is going to give a lecture on Martin Gardner at Queen Mary University of London next April. Exciting!
As part of the 2014 British Mathematical Colloquium, join Professor Persi Diaconis, mathematician and former professional magician to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Martin Gardner, with a lecture on the life, work and magic of this famous populariser of mathematics and science.
Martin Gardner brought mathematics to life for millions of people from homemakers to professional mathematicians. Professor Diaconis will try to explain what he did and how he did it. From Alice in Wonderland, Psychic exposures, bad poetry, the Game of Life, public key cryptography and a thousand other things, his clarity and curiosity are contagious. But, beware–as someone once wrote:
WARNING: Martin Gardner has turned dozens of innocent youngsters into math professors and thousands of math professors into innocent youngsters.
The hour-long lecture will take place at 18:30 on the 7th of April, 2014, in the Great Hall of QMUL’s People’s Palace.
More information
The Magic of Martin Gardner event page at QMUL.
via Ivan Tomasic on Twitter
Review: X&Y
If you have ever wanted to see Marcus du Sautoy reduced in size and placed in a laundry bag, then this is the mathematical play for you!
GeoGebra Conference Budapest 2014
Just thought I’d bring the upcoming GeoGebra Conference 2014 in Budapest to your attention.
The main purpose of the conference is to provide a meeting platform for [International GeoGebra Institute (IGI)] members, and GeoGebra users, including teachers of all levels, educators, researchers, and developers from all over the World. The conference will allow ample time for speakers and audience interaction, and will encourage discussion of experiences, sharing of good practices, effective mathematics pedagogies that include GeoGebra, and enhancement of professional skills, and knowledge.
More information and registration: GeoGebra Conference Budapest 2014
Bart The Genius
Amusing to hear John Humphrys incredulous at something I felt was well-known & obvious: The Simpsons has maths jokes http://t.co/jSJO7Or0yp
— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) October 2, 2013