Owing to an incredibly small discrepancy between the atomic clock length of a year and the time it takes for the sun to orbit the earth, and the dogged insistence of scientists for being as close as possible to correct all the time, tomorrow is the most recent in a series of days where time goes a bit weird momentarily due to the addition of a leap second. This means 30th June 2012 will last for 86,401 seconds instead of the usual 86,400. Internet mathematician and pedant Matt Parker reports this as an 0.00116% increase on the usual number of seconds in a day.
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π vs τ: FOTSN/Tau Day special
Since it’s $\tau$ Day, we thought we’d give Festival of the Spoken Nerd constant-fans Matt Parker and Steve Mould a chance to air their respective viewpoints in the $\tau$ vs $\pi$ debate. It’s a maths showdown!
Etienne Ghys, 2012 LMS Hardy Lecturer
It was a couple of weeks ago now that I saw Étienne Ghys deliver a lecture titled On cutting cloth, according to Chebyshev at Newcastle University, as part of his lecture tour as Hardy Fellow for 2012. I had no idea what the talk was about and only a faint idea of who Prof Ghys was but I was persuaded to go by my ex-supervisor, who also happens to be Newcastle’s LMS rep. It turned out to be an enormously interesting and entertaining talk on a very accessible problem (in the sense that you can easily understand what the problem is and why the solution works, if not how you get there) by one of the most eminent mathematicians working today.
Math/Maths 102: Turing, mad scientist & Newton, action hero
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: Turing Centenary; Shouryya Ray, 16-Year-Old ‘Genius,’ Didn’t Actually Solve Newton’s 350-Year-Old Mathematical Problem; LMS Good Practice Scheme on Women in Mathematics; On “Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Contains Strategies that Dominate Any Evolutionary Opponent”; Colin Beveridge’s Super Subtraction Feat; DragonBox: iPhone Algebra Game; ShareLaTex; Isaac Newton set to become the next Hollywood action hero; Computing Mathematics: Tony Mann appointed to 415-year-old London College; Museum of Mathematics Opening Ceremony: 12-12-12; Maths Busking Engage U Results; Math52 reaches Kickstarter goal; Awards showcase excellence in data journalism around the globe; and more.
Get this episode: Math/Maths 102: Turing, mad scientist & Newton, action hero
An answer to what Shouryya Ray’s ‘unsolved Newton problem’ was
You may remember a story, widely reported, that 16 year old student Shouryya Ray from Dresden had solved “puzzles posed by Sir Isaac Newton that have baffled mathematicians for 350 years“. You may have read our write up of this, which concluded that
it is likely that some piece of impressive work has been completed and Shouryya Ray is to be commended. However, pending further information on the work, we are now fairly convinced that this is being overblown by the press reports.
You may also remember that some reports had Ray coming across the problems “during a school trip to Dresden University where professors claimed they were uncrackable”. Now an open letter has appeared on the webpages of the Technische Universität Dresden signed by Prof. Dr. Ralph Chill and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Voigt, which offers some answers.
Turing Round Up
Today is the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth. Turing did not just one but several hugely important things during his life, none of which were properly appreciated while he lived or for a long time after he died. In the run up to his centenary, a campaign to make people aware of Turing and the enormous impact he made on so many fields, and most importantly to clear his reputation, has been more successful than anyone could have hoped. Turing is now rightly recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, as a victim of persecution, and as a war hero.
The Turing Centenary campaign has been so successful that we’ve decided there’s no need for us to write a biography of Turing, or to highlight some obscure thing he did, or really anything. Literally hundreds of pieces have been written, by some of the greatest writers and thinkers in the world, covering every detail of Turing’s life from his school days to his more obscure mathematical work, up to the circumstances leading to his suicide.
So instead, we’ve collected together some of the best exposition, reporting, and creative expression we’ve found to commemorate the life of Alan Turing.
Unusual prime number competition results
Author Robin Sloan offered a simple competition:
give me a prime number of your choosing. I’ll send books to the five people who choose the lowest unique prime numbers. So, if you pick 2 but seven other people pick 2, no book for you. If you pick 3 and no one else picks 3, you get a book.
Which number would you pick?
The primes people chose, including the five winners, and more background information are given in a blog post The Penumbra primes.