A new play called Game of Life is to be performed from 5th-22nd September at The Yard in Hackney Wick in London. It will apparently “bring to life a scientific theory: the phenomenon of ‘emergence’, and Conway’s ‘game of life’ — an elegant mathematical model simulating birth, death and survival”.
You're reading: News
Math/Maths 110: Subtraction is a both brain activity
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: A clue to solving Kryptos; The Game of Life: The Play; The Bletchley Circle; Mathalicious: the Video Series; Geogebra for the iPad Kickstarter; Math Requires Crosstalk in the Brain; Information and Inference: a Journal of the IMA; Maths and Sport and Plus on the Paralympics; and more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 110: Subtraction is a both brain activity
Ada Lovelace Day Live!
Ada Lovelace Day Live! is “an evening of fun, inspiration and robots” in London in October. The website offers this description:
Join Helen Arney, Dr Suzie Sheehy, Gia Milinovich, Dr Helen Scales, Helen Keen, Dr Alice Bell, Sarah Angliss and Sydney Padua for an entertaining evening of science, technology, comedy and song on Ada Lovelace Day. Featuring all manner of wonders, from marine biology and particle physics to the secrets of fridges and performance robots, Ada Lovelace Day Live! is an event not to be missed!
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths. The event is also supported by the Women’s Engineering Society, who will be presenting the Karen Burt Memorial Award to a newly chartered woman engineer.
The event takes place on Tuesday 16 October 2012 at 6.30pm at the IET in London. Tickets cost £10.
More information: Ada Lovelace Day Live!
Information and Inference: new journal with free content for two years
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications has launched a new journal, Information and Inference: a Journal of the IMA. This aims to
publish high quality mathematically-oriented articles, furthering the understanding of the theory, methods of analysis, and algorithms for information and data.
Articles should be written in a way accessible to researchers in the associated topics in pure and applied mathematics, statistics, computer sciences, and electrical engineering. Articles are published in, but not limited to: information theory, statistical inference, network analysis, numerical analysis, learning theory, applied and computational harmonic analysis, probability, combinatorics, signal processing, and high-dimensional geometry.
According to the website, “all content will be free to access for the first two years of publication of the journal”. You can sign up for free email table of contents alerts.
The first paper, ‘The masked sample covariance estimator: an analysis using matrix concentration inequalities‘, has been made available for advanced online access.
More information: Oxford Journals: Information and Inference: a Journal of the IMA.
A clue to deciphering Kryptos
Kryptos. Photo: Jim Sanborn
You may be aware of Kryptos, the sculpture covered in enciphered text and located outside CIA headquarters (and so not accessible to the general public). Three of the four messages on the sculpture have been decrypted, but the fourth remained obscured. Now the Telegraph reports that the sculptor, Jim Sanborn, who is apparently surprised that the puzzle is unsolved 22 years after the sculpture was created – has offered a clue “by divulging six of the 97 letters in that last phrase”:
On the sculpture, they read NYPVTT. Decoded, they say BERLIN, he disclosed.
Maths and Paralympic Sport in Plus magazine
Apparently there’s a parallel Olympics taking place in series with the Olympics in London.
Having done such an excellent job so far this summer, the Millennium Mathematics Project is continuing its coverage from a mathematical angle, with the Plus Paralympic calendar and the special project Maths and Sport: Countdown to the Games. For example, John Barrow discovers when investigating the different speeds of races over different distances that wheelchair racing is “not just a wheel-based equivalent of Olympic racing” but is quite a different kettle of fish.
A trailer for Keith Devlin’s Intro to Mathematical Thinking MOOC
Keith Devlin has recorded a 3-minute video advertising his Introduction to Mathematical Thinking MOOC on Coursera.
In this, Keith explains the aims of the course, which includes elements seen previously on his MOOC Talk blog, and discusses the structure of the course and a little about the MOOC concept.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFs06zgBfMI
According to a tweet from Keith on 27 August, over 33,600 students have registered for the course since registration opened in July. The course starts on the 17th of September.
More info: Introduction to Mathematical Thinking on Coursera