The organisation behind the Breakthrough Prize has announced a competition aimed at school-age kids, called the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which encourages them to get excited about maths and science, and to make a 10-minute video explaining a challenging concept – which can be an existing bit of research, or something they’ve done themselves.
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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.
Timothy Gowers has launched a new arXiv overlay journal
Sir Timothy Gowers has announced on his blog a new journal, Discrete Analysis, of which he will be the managing editor. Rather than a traditional journal, this will be an open-access ‘arXiv overlay’.
Vote for MathML support in Microsoft Edge
MathJax manager Peter Krautzberger continues his quest to get web browsers to support MathML, by tweeting a link to this page on the Windows UserVoice forum where you can vote to get the Microsoft Edge team to implement the maths markup standard.
Vote for MathML support: MathML at Windows Dev Feedback.
Previously in MathML’s struggle for anyone to care:
LMS Local Heroes
The London Mathematical Society, as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations, is running a project entitled Local Heroes, in which they have encouraged and funded local museums to put on exhibits about mathematicians from their area. The funding was allocated in 2014, and during 2015 various exhibits have been taking place in different parts of the UK, each celebrating a local number hero.
EDIT: the Lincoln exhibit has been extended until 3rd November – details below.
Analytical Engine, Lovelace & Babbage LEGO Ideas proposal needs support
LEGO have a system where people can propose new LEGO sets. If they get 10,000 supporters, they will be reviewed by LEGO. If LEGO like the idea, it may become an actual set they sell (and the person who proposed the idea benefits with 1% of net sales and other rewards).
Anyway, Stewart Lamb Cromar (an e-learning chap at University of Edinburgh) has proposed a set based on the Analytical Engine and featuring Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage minifigures (including, apparently, spanners). An idea has to get 1,000 supporters in its first year or it will expire; this one has passed that bar in less than two months and has over 2,600 supporters at time of writing.
Anyway, I think it looks quite cool. To support it is free, though you have to sign up for a LEGO ID and answer a short survey: ‘What would you expect this product to cost (USD)?’, ‘How many do you think most people would buy?’, ‘Who do you think this project would be good for?’ and ‘How difficult would you say this project would be to build?’. It only took a couple of minutes (I was supporter no. 2604).
Expect more Ada Lovelace this year as it’s the 200th anniversary of her birth on 10th December. For example, on 17th September at 9pm BBC Four is showing a documentary by Hannah Fry: Calculating Ada: The Countess of Computing.
More information
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.