If you were interested in Keith Devlin’s Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) Introduction to Mathematical Thinking in the autumn but heard about it too late, didn’t have time to take part, or signed up but couldn’t keep on top of the course, you may be pleased to hear that Keith has announced plans for the course to run again from 4th March 2013 for 10 weeks. This is longer than the seven week course which started in September.
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- Mathematical Christmas cracker jokes
- Fractal Christmas trees
- Posts from MathsJam speakers – Tom Button on Radii of Polyhedra and Phil Harvey on AS Results and Batting Averages
- The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey
- Carnival of Mathematics 94
Aperiodcast – Christiansmas Eve 2013
After two months we’ve finally done another podcast! We completely forgot even the most rudimentary things about how to do a podcast. Sorry.
In this episode, we talked about:
As always, we’re keen to hear about your mathematical exploits either by email to root@aperiodical.com or through our new, streamlined sending-something-in form.
If you’ve got some ideas for how we can do a better podcast, we’d be particularly keen to hear from you.
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The nonsense math effect
This week, the Freakonomics blog covered research by Stockholm University’s Kimmo Eriksson, which found that including a mathematical equation in the abstract of a research paper made scholars from different fields judge the research to be ‘of higher quality’, even though the equation is unrelated to the work and also complete nonsense. The study included 200 participants, although the amount by which the equation increased the perceived ‘quality’ of research varied between disciplines, and in fact caused a slight decrease for people working in mathematics or science subjects.
Math/Maths 127: Hiatus Begins
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.
A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. The podcast is going on hiatus for a few months, so Samuel and Peter give a short goodbye, with: mathematical Christmas presents; a list of back-episodes to listen to on special topics or with special guests; other podcasts to try; what they’re doing for the next six months; and a heartfelt thanks and goodbye.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 127: Hiatus Begins
The Aperiodical’s Possibly Annual Awards for Mathematical Achievement
Christian Perfect: 2012 was an alright year. At the very least, all of it happened, which is better than some had predicted. And since 2012 did happen, we are obliged by the Laws of Something to give out some awards.
Katie Steckles: Of course, the most noteworthy thing which happened in 2012 was the creation of an amazing mathematical blogging website, but I don’t mean to go on too much about that. Anyway, we’ve gathered together some candidates for some categories we made up, and will decide on our favourites via the process of arguing.
CP: Allons-y!
2013: I can be the year of stuff too!
2013 will be the first year since 1987 in which all digits are different from one-another.
— The QI Elves (@qikipedia) December 31, 2012
In case you were bored of hearing that amazing ‘mathematical’ fact number coincidence, don’t worry – 2013 is mathematical for other reasons. Even though we’ve run out of Alan Turing Centenary year, and the slightly-under-mentioned Poincaré Centenary year, apparently 2013 is both The International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013) and the year of scientific collaboration project Mathematics of Planet Earth 2013. Watch out for upcoming events related to both!
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical last year
Here’s a quick round-up of some news stories from the tail end of 2012 that we characteristically failed to write up!