If anyone remembers October 2012 (ahh, those were the days) you might recall we wrote about Aperiodipal Matt Parker, and his crazy project to build a computer out of dominoes. Well, it happened, but not much has happened since – sorting out a video of the event has taken a while. But it’s ready now! And it’s great!
You're reading: News
- How can I estimate the length of an exam? (top answer: do it yourself, and multiply by 8)
- What is a good handwriting font for mathematics? (more data for Let’s Talk About X, which provoked a lot of discussion here a while ago)
- How to assign homework when answers are freely available or attainable online? (top answer: remember the true meaning of
Christmashomework)
Jerry Roberts has died
One of the last surviving Bletchley Park codebreakers, Jerry Roberts, has died aged 93. He was one of a small group of codebreakers who decrypted messages from the German High Command, including the German plans for the battle of Kursk. He initially worked on the Double Playfair hand cipher used by the German police, and later was part of the team working on the (more difficult than the well-known Enigma) Lorenz cipher, which used two sets of five cipher wheels.
Roberts had a successful career after the war in market research, and was a campaigner in later years for greater recognition for his fellow codebreakers – including William Tutte and Tommy Flowers, who had built the Colossus computer which cracked the codes, and Alan Turing, who also apparently did something.
Jerry Roberts obituary – The Guardian
Bletchley Park codebreaker Jerry Roberts dies, aged 93 – BBC News website
Jerry Roberts – Obituary – The Telegraph
MC Hammer is mathematically untouchable
Happy birthday to MC Hammer who, at age 52, is now mathematically untouchable.
Math Awareness Month 2014
Hey, you! Are you aware of MATH?
Well, of course you’d say yes. But every year the Joint Policy Board for Mathematics runs a Math Awareness Month in April as an excuse to promote a load of great materials and events designed to attract other people to the subject.
Yakov Sinai awarded the 2014 Abel Prize
Yakov Sinai. Photo © Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, CC-BY-SA 2.0
The Abel Prize for 2014 has gone to Yakov Sinai of Princeton University, “for his fundamental contributions to dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and mathematical physics”.
Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange
There’s a new Stack Exchange site for mathematics educators to ask and answer questions to do with the teaching of mathematics.
To give you an idea of what the site’s for, here are a few interesting questions that have already been asked:
The site is quite US-oriented at the moment because of who’s using it, but it doesn’t specifically exclude non-Americans from its remit.
LASER TURING
Since we’re the leading authority on Alan Turing news stories, and since it’s clear that anything is improved by the addition of LASERS, we’re proud to report that the Manchester Histories Festival, taking place across Manchester on March 21-28, will include LASER ALAN TURING.
The centrepiece of the festival will be a laser light show at MediaCity in Salford, playing throughout the festival; it will include a ‘thank you’ message to Alan Turing, in morse code, by artist Craig Morrison, and involves two mile laser beams. The Histories Festival says:
The art is a tribute to the impact he continues to have on how we live today in a digitally connected world.
More information
Laser light spectacular to pay tribute to Alan Turing at festival at the Manchester Evening News
Thank you event page