Many of you who are aware of the internet will have noticed that some mild controversy has surrounded a recent Numberphile video, posted last week:
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww]
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Festival of the Spoken Nerd in geographical relocation shocker
Anticapitalists, please note: This post is categorised “not-directly-paid-for friendertisement”. We’re plugging a thing our friends do because we think it’s good, but alas, they make money off it. Please read with caution.
Fans of mathematics and science in general will be pleased to hear that they no longer have to travel long distances to see comedy show Festival of the Spoken Nerd – as it’s on tour! The show features Stand-up Mathematician and friend of the Aperiodical Matt Parker, as well as some-time mathematician Steve Mould, and singer of science and maths songs Helen Arney. The comedy trio are visiting over 30 locations around the UK and performing their new show, Full Frontal Nerdity, which I’m assured ‘contains strong language and spreadsheets’, and is guaranteed to ‘feed your brain, tickle your ribs and light your Bunsen burner’. It’s a longer version of the show they performed at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, and would make a great group night out for a maths department or other gathering of scientifically-minded humans (just saying).
Full details of the show, and a list of dates, can be found at the Festival of the Spoken Nerd website.
Spot the Ball (he’s the one talking about maths)
TV maths advocate and certified old person Johnny Ball is hoping to stage what will be a record-breaking World’s Largest Maths Lesson, by filling a stadium with kids and talking to them all about maths at the same time. The event will take place on March 19th, during National Science and Engineering week, and will be aimed at 9-13 year olds.
The current world record is 2,981, set in Nigeria in July 2013, and they’re hoping to smash that using Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium (capacity: 39,460) – Johnny Ball himself has stated he’d be happy with “5, 6, 7 or 8,000 kids” (7 kids probably isn’t enough – better shoot for 8,000). The event is being sponsored by Yorkshire-based boiler maintenance company (?!) Help-Link, and is supported by Leeds City Council.
If you’re a maths teacher in Yorkshire, or know anyone who is, tickets are free and you can apply by emailing the organisers. Details are below.
Further reading:
TV legend hosts bid to stage the world’s biggest maths lesson at stadium, at the Yorkshire Evening Post.
Help-Link to break a Guinness World record in 2014, on the Help-Link website.
Help-Link UK’s Giant Maths Lesson with Johnny Ball, on YouTube.
Event flyer (PDF)
National Science and Engineering week.
via Alex Bellos on Twitter
Proof News: Designs exist!
The year in proofs has started with a big result in combinatorics: the existence conjecture for designs. As usual, weightier minds than ours have comprehensively explained the result, so I’ll just give a brief summary of the problem and then some links.
All Squared, Number 11 – Maths Jam
MathsJam is an annual conference in the UK, and a monthly night in pubs around the world, organised respectively by mathematician and juggler Colin Wright, and stand-up mathematician Matt Parker. We cornered Matt and Colin at the MathsJam conference last November, and talked to them for just over half an hour about the conference, the pub nights, and a disturbing amount about cake.
Here are some links to the things we talked about:
MathsJam website
MathsJam conference website
@MathsJam, on Twitter
MathsJam Bake-off entries, 2013
Matt’s maths mug
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Carnival of Mathematics #106 – December 2013
Happy New Year! And welcome to the first Carnival of Mathematics of 2014. The Carnival is a monthly roundup of blog posts on or related to mathematics, from all over the internet. Posts are submitted by authors and readers, and collated by the host, whose blog it’s posted on. This month, the Carnival has pulled in here at The Aperiodical, and we’re all ready with our party hats for the celebration of mathematical blogging that implies.
Tydlig, a nice calculator for iOS
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbXaKxxUomE]
Closer to a computer algebra system than a traditional calculator, this new app for iOS (iPhone and iPad) allows you to make calculations and create graphs, and mess around with the values to see what that does to the output. It looks like this is achieved without using any (explicit) symbolics, which results in a neat and pretty interface, made even nicer by the fact that you can move calculations around the screen and arrange them as you want. The name, Tydlig, is the Swedish word for ‘clear’.
If anyone’s willing to download a copy ((TYDLIG is also the name of an induction hob sold by IKEA, and if anyone wants to buy and review that too, you’re welcome to, but not for this site.)) ($4.99 on the App Store) and try it out, we’d be interested to hear how easy it is to use, and what other nice tricks it’s got up its sleeve. Use the ‘Send something in’ link above to get in touch, or leave a comment below.
More information
Tydlig on Twitter.