In an effort to save us from having to write up yet another Alan Turing-based news story, Adam Goucher over at Complex Projective 4-Space has kindly done it for us. Thanks, Adam!
Read: Orchestral Biography of Turing, at Complex Projective 4-Space
You're reading: News
Get a grip on mathematical symbolism with Loughborough University
Here’s yet another intro to mathematical thinking MOOC. Loughborough University, and in particular Professor Tony Croft, is offering a course called “Getting a grip on mathematical symbolism” through the FutureLearn platform. It starts on the 28th of April.
There isn’t much information about the course online yet, apart from the brief description on the official website and this AV-services-tastic trailer:
[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BRUyltBCMU]
Since everything to do with popular maths has to pun (see also: literally any other page on this site), I can only assume that the course will end with the construction of a robotic hand or high-friction surface.
Tony Croft has a good pedigree with online learning resources: for many years he’s been in charge of maths support at Loughborough, including the invaluable mathcentre support site.
More information
Meterfy – numbers for everyone!
Number of dogs in the USA on anti-depressants = 2,800,000 https://t.co/FQkQBG8Cbg
— Mark Miodownik (@markmiodownik) April 4, 2014
A freshly-launched repository for curious, random factoids about numbers: https://t.co/CMj6M3ANLE Browse, and submit your own…
— Alex Bellos (@alexbellos) April 5, 2014
Fans of numbers will be pleased to hear that they now have their own social network. I’m not sure if I mean than numbers do, or fans of numbers do, but either way Meterfy is a newly launched internet website on which you can share, and discover, a huge quantity of numbers – statistics, constants, totals, averages and molar masses abound.
Domputer: the movie
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!
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.