A tweet purporting to be ((Yes, I know, but it was retweeted by Thomas Woolley, who should know.)) from the press office of UKTV, the company that owns the channel Dave, has confirmed that the TV show Dara O Briain: School of Hard Sums is to return for a second series (we at least thought we knew this in July). It also says that production company Wild Rover are looking for maths students to take part. The tweet asks you to email maths@wild-rover.com to express an interest. You might remember that the first series, which aired in April-June, did very well compared with other programmes on the channel.
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- the De Morgan Medal — “the Society’s premier award for contributions to mathematics”;
- the Senior Whitehead Prize — for “work in, influence on or service to mathematics, or in recognition of lecturing gifts in the field of mathematics”;
- the Naylor Prize and Lectureship — for “work in, influence on and contributions to applied mathematics and/or the applications of mathematics and lecturing gifts”;
- the Berwick Prize — “in recognition of an outstanding piece of mathematical research actually published by the Society during the eight years ending on 31 December 2012”;
- and, up to four Whitehead Prizes — for “work in and influence on mathematics”.
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical last week
The way the news section of this site works is, the three of us send in links throughout the week to stories we’ve seen. They go into a section of the site’s backend titled “anyone can edit”, which is code for “someone else please write this up.” It tends to fill up until one of us takes a day, typically a Friday, to run through it and write up as many news stories as they can manage before finger cramps or brain blockages kick in.
This ad hoc news coverage system tends to mean that we miss quite a few big stories, because they take time to research and present in a form we’d be happy with. There are also times when it’s quite hard to tell whether something that’s big in the mainstream press is actually worthwhile, or the result of a canny university PR department framing something uninteresting in a way that will grab editors’ attentions.
On top of all of this, we haven’t been particularly good neighbours so far: there’s a lot of good maths blogging going on around the world, and we’ve been a bit of a closed shop so far.
So what we thought we should do is write a post at the end of each week quickly mentioning the things we didn’t get round to covering, or decided not to cover, and throw in some links to good maths posts we’ve seen elsewhere. Here’s the first one of those.
US high school mathematics teacher Liz Ratliff is going to the South Pole with the IceCube neutrino observatory under a programme called PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating). You can follow her adventures on her online journal, in the most recent post of which she describes the theoretical background behind the IceCube facility (“basically a giant telescope buried under the ice at the South Pole”). (This story via Samuel Hansen on Math/Maths 120.)
New Scientist published a piece ‘Mathematical proof reveals magic of Ramanujan’s genius‘, about Ken Ono’s (unpublished) work on modular forms.
And, of course, the big news this week, to which we felt we had little to contribute, was the work of Nate Silver in predicting the outcome of the US Election.Some was more triumphant, such as Mashable’s ‘Triumph of the Nerds: Nate Silver Wins in 50 States‘ or the xkcd comic ‘Math‘, and some were more in the mode of sober reflection, such as The Baseline Scenario’s ‘A Few Thoughts on Nate Silver‘, which offers “as Daniel Engber pointed out, the fact that Obama won (and that Silver called all fifty states correctly) doesn’t prove that Silver is a genius any more than Obama’s losing would have proven that he was a fraud”, with some discussion of how probabilistic forecasting should be treated.
Some drew wider conclusions about the state of mathematics and numeracy in the general public, like the Cocktail Party Physics blog’s ‘Why Math is Like the Honey Badger: Nate Silver Ascendant‘. How did he do it? There’s a good piece on More or Less still available via iPlayer Radio, and the GrrlScientist blog offers ‘How did Nate Silver predict the US election?‘ Felix Salmon wrote about Nate’s ability to cast his predictions in a compelling narrative in ‘When quants tell stories‘. But the definitive account of how his process works is given by the site Is Nate Silver a Witch?
Nate himself offers a roundup of ‘Which Polls Fared Best (and Worst) in the 2012 Presidential Race‘.
Considering PhD research in mathematics in 2013? LMS Prospects in Mathematics meeting
The LMS Prospects in Mathematics meeting will take place in Manchester, 18-19 December 2012. This meeting is for people “considering applying for Ph.D. studies in Mathematics for entry in 2013”. Funding is available to provide accommodation for around 50 participants and to help cover their cost of travelling to Manchester. The conference website has further details and explains that
the conference has the goal to introduce the many and varied opportunities for research in mathematics that exist at universities in the UK. Speakers will share their passion about mathematical research by describing the type of questions they are working on, and will discuss where their research topic is being actively studied in the UK. Moreover, information about the Doctoral Training Centres in Mathematical Sciences and funding opportunities will be available.
More information: LMS Prospects in Mathematics.
Education reform in England: new initiatives and changes announced
It’s shaping up to be a busy month for education reform in England. Here’s some news in brief.
Call for nominations for 2013 LMS Prizes
The London Mathematical Society has opened nominations for its 2013 prizes, to “recognise and celebrate achievements in and contributions to mathematics”. In 2013 the Society expects to award:
More information about the prizes and how to make appropriate nominations is available at the LMS website. The closing date for nominations is Friday 18 January 2013.
Math/Maths 120: Math Wins US Election
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: Nate Silver’s victory in the US election; some stuff you should go to in the next two weeks; changes to A-levels, ban on calculators in tests for 11-year-olds and another teacher development programme; Gowers’ catheter ablation; A Math Teacher goes to the South Pole; and more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 120: Math Wins US Election
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