The London Mathematical Society Popular Lectures for 2013 have been announced. Professor Ray Hill, University of Salford, will talk about ‘Mathematics in the Courtroom’, and Dr. Vicky Neale, University of Cambridge, will give a lecture on ‘Addictive Number Theory’.
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Travelling Salesman Movie London screening
We previously reported a Cambridge screening of the Travelling Salesman Movie, the “intellectual thriller about four of the world’s smartest mathematicians hired by the U.S. government to solve the most elusive problem in computer science history — P vs. NP”. Now the movie is being screened in London, by the City University London Student Union Computing Society (whose website charmingly has a command line interface). This will take place at City University London on the 18th of April 2013 at 6pm.
Here is the trailer:
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybd5rbQ5rU]
More information:
Buy tickets (“Pay as you wish – £4 suggested Minimum”)
Travelling Salesman Movie official site
Interview with writer and director Timothy Lanzone on the Math/Maths Podcast.
Erdős Centennial conference
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics, the Eötvös Loránd University and the János Bolyai Mathematical Society have announced a conference dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Paul Erdős from 1st-5th July 2013 in Budapest, Hungary.
‘Maths whizz’ ‘predicts’ Grand National ‘winner’
Cambridge News is reporting that “maths whizz” and Cambridge maths masters graduate ((I particularly like how Click Liverpool has: “A “Master of Maths” has developed a formula…” as though “Master of Maths” is a made up thing.)) William Hartston has devised a system for predicting the winner at the Grand National on Saturday. Apparently he “looked at the number of letters in a horse’s name and the name’s first letter, the number of words the name contains and the horse’s age”. His system scores horses on a scale of up to 16 points; horses with one-word names beginning with the letters S, R, M or C and consisting of eight or 10 letters score well. The system apparently also takes age into account, which seems reasonable, but not the many other factors you might expect.
Hartston is quoted saying that Seabass is favourite to win as “the only horse with consistently high scores across all four criteria as it begins with S, is a one-word name, aged 10 years and has seven letters which is only slightly short of the preferred eight”. In fact, two horses scored 13 points, but Seabass has been chosen over Tatenen due to the mysterious claim “the latter’s scoring pattern was not as consistent as that of the former”. I’m unsure if this means that Tatenen’s name has changed.
And the work was “commissioned” by William Hill.
So far, so nonsense formula based on spurious correlations, but is that all there is to it? I always find it hard to believe that these stories are written or published, but there is something about Hartston as a source that seems especially strange.
George E. P. Box (1919-2013)
March was a terribly sad month for the University of Wisconsin; just days after losing Mary Ellen Rudin, George E. P. Box also passed away. He was 93.
Long-standing ‘Continuum Hypothesis’ disproved
After what has so far been an inexplicably fruitful morning of mathematical revelations, the mathematical world is now reeling after yet another long-standing mathematical question has been answered. While we are still reeling from the shock resignation of Aperiodical editor Christian Perfect, whose presence on the site will be sadly missed, our obligation is still to report the mathematical news.
The Continuum Hypothesis, originally posed by set theorist Georg Cantor in 1878, states that there is no set whose cardinality is between that of the integers and that of the real numbers. While this statement has been proved undecidable (that is, a proof has been given that it is impossible to prove the truth or falsehood of the result using the standard logical axioms), one of our authors has succeeded in determining that in fact a set of such intermediate size does exist. The proof is ground-breaking and so impressively concise that any attempt at verifying it would be, frankly, a waste of time.
The author, the Aperiodical’s own Katie Steckles, is now in the running for a Fields Medal, or International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics. If the award were to be made, Steckles would become the first female mathematician to be awarded such an honour.
Read the ground-breaking paper here: A disproof of the Continuum Hypothesis
I resign
I have had enough. My jealous “partners” on this site, Peter and Katie, have for too long refused to take seriously my VERY IMPORTANT mathematical ideas. I do not know if they are working for THEM and are trying to suppress my TRUTH-WORDS or if they are just too stupid-unenlightened to see the brilliance of my work,, but I have decided enough is enough.
I am resigning from this site immediately so I can spend all of my time perfecting my UNIVERSAL EQUIVALENCE THEORY which has already revealed so many secrets previously hidden from my eyes.
Please read my latest paper, A Universal-Equivalent Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis (Primes Theorem) and if you, unlike Katie or Peter (Peter = Petrus = BLOOD FROM A ROCK) can see the importance of this sine qua non ex nihilis then please join me at my new site, once my new hosts have secured it to my specifications. I will divulge its address when I am sure it is safe.