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: Main
App review: Tydlig, a calculator app for iOS
You may remember that we previously posted about Tydlig, a new calculator app for iOS. We asked if anyone would be interested in writing a review, and Aoife, who’s written the article below, kindly obliged.
Tydlig is a reimagined calculator on iOS and provides an innovative, freeform canvas where multiple calculations can be built and organised in one space. It functions as a scientific calculator, but on an open workspace that you can control, with additional visual features. Elegant in its simplicity, Tydlig captures all of the necessary components of a calculator, while maintaining refined and intelligible functionality.
App review: Incredible Numbers, by Ian Stewart
Mathematician and author Professor Ian Stewart, helped by Touch Press and his publisher Profile Books, has recently released a new app for iOS (suitable for use on an iPad) called Incredible Numbers. We saw this tweet:
I highly recommend Incredible Numbers, iPad app by Ian Stewart. New gold standard for interactive maths. For all. https://t.co/bI9YfUpViP
— Alex Bellos (@alexbellos) March 31, 2014
and how could we resist? We borrowed a nearby iPad, downloaded the app and had a play.
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”.