Colm Mulcahy talking about Martin Gardner. Photo by Rodger Hergert.
MathFest continues apace! Here are Colm’s pictures from day 2.
MAA MathFest Day 2
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MAA MathFest Day 1
The Mathematical Association of America is throwing a big mathematical party at the moment in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s called MathFest 2012 and promises to be “informative, inspiring, and productive.”
Our intrepid schoolboy reporter Colm Mulcahy is in attendance, and will be sending in pictures and thoughts throughout the three days of the event.
Science Media Centre’s ‘rather good’ guidelines for reporting science & health stories
David Spiegelhalter, writing at his Understanding Uncertainty blog, highlights a set of “basic guidelines for science coverage” which were “drawn up in consultation with scientists, science reporters, editors and sub editors” and submitted by the Science Media Centre to the Leveson Inquiry. David says “they are rather good” (admitting that he was consulted on a first draft). He says:
It will be interesting to see whether they are eventually endorsed by Leveson, or whether Editors voluntarily sign up to them.
Note that I present this information with no context or background, no independent expert quoted and no discussion of the limitations of the process that arrived at the guidelines. I’ve put a quote in the headline to make it seem more exciting while dodging the issue of editorialising. Perhaps I should claim the guidelines offer ‘a cure for bad science reporting’.
Source: 10 best practice guidelines for reporting science & health stories.
New UK economic and social data service to launch in October
The UK Data Service, due to launch on 1 October 2012, is funded for five years by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and aims to “support researchers in academia, business, third sector and all levels of government” by providing “a unified point of access to the extensive range of high quality economic and social data, including valuable census data”.
Matt Parker’s writing a book!
The Bookseller have announced that Penguin Press have bought the rights to a book by Matt Parker. Things To Make And Do In The Fourth Dimension is pitched as
an alternative maths lesson, with activities and thought experiments helping people go beyond the classroom to make calculators out of dominoes and see what soap bubbles have to do with calculus.
I like the sound of “a nine-publisher auction, where all bids were made in prime numbers, numbers derived from pi, and other mathematical figures.”
Matt Parker said to The Aperiodical, “I’m very proud to be writing a book; I think books are really the technology of the future. I see a lot of promise in this whole written-word field.”
Source: Penguin beats nine to Parker book.
Gaffe Theory: Mitt Romney’s followers are almost definitely robots, says analysis
An analysis published in The Atlantic sought to test a hypothesis whether Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers are real or whether they display ‘bot-like’ behaviour. This follows a sudden recent spike in followers to his account. The same analysis was completed for Barack Obama’s account as well. So, are Mitt and Barack’s followers real?
2011 Census figures released
The RSS are reporting that the first figures from the 2011 Census have been released. The big headline is population growth – an increase of 3.7 million (7.1%) since 2001. Other than that,
other key figures in the release show that the percentage of people aged 65 and over was the highest seen in any previous census, standing at 16.4 per cent. The median age of the population was 39 and there were 3.5 million children under five years of age.
While all regions have experienced population growth, the highest was in London, which gained more than 850,000 residents, an increase of 11.6 per cent.
Data from Northern Ireland’s census was also released today, revealing that its population is also the highest it’s ever been, at 1,810,900. The first release of Scottish data from the 2011 census is scheduled for December 2012.
Source: First figures from the 2011 Census released.
Find out more: First release of 2011 census data from the Office of National Statistics.