With news that a recent proof of the Boolean Pythagorean Triples Theorem is the ‘largest proof ever’, we collect and run-down some of the biggest, baddest, proofiest chunks of monster maths.
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CLP reads “Non-sexist solution to the ménage problem”
I rediscovered this nice paper by Kenneth P. Bogart in my Interesting Esoterica collection, and decided to read through it. It turned out that, while the solution presented is very neat, there’s quite a bit of hard work to do to along the way. I’m not particularly experienced with combinatorics, so the little facts that the paper skips over took me quite a while to verify.
Once I was happy with the proof, I decided to record a video explaining how it works. Here it is:
I probably made mistakes. If you spot one, please write a polite correction in the comments.
Maths and stats on Radio 1!
(For once I can use an exclamation mark next to a number without wise alecks making the canonical joke)
Maths and stats! On BBC Radio 1! Who’d’ve though it!
DJ Clara Amfo and the ubiquitous Hannah Fry have got a new series on the UK’s top pop station, looking at music from a mathematical perspective.
Music by Numbers (excuse me, Music by Num83r5), is currently being broadcast at 9pm each Tuesday, and there are a couple of episodes already on iPlayer Radio to catch up on. The first is about Coldplay (records sold: millions; distinct tunes composed: 1) and the second looks at a few numbers to do with Iggy Azalea’s career.
It’s mostly a very easy listen, more a biography hung off a list of numbers than any real maths, but that might be your cup of tea. And Dr Fry’s segments do go into a little bit of depth about subjects like how the top 40 chart is calculated.
I’ll warn you now that each episode is an hour long, with a lot of music breaks. If you’re like me, your tolerance for some of the featured artists might not be sufficient to get through a whole episode in one go.
Listen: Music by Numbers on BBC Radio 1.
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical this month, May 2016
Here are a few of the stories that we didn’t get round to covering in depth this month.
Turing’s Sunflowers Project – results
Manchester Science Festival’s mass-participation maths/gardening project, Turing’s Sunflowers, ran in 2012 and invited members of the public to grow their own sunflowers, and then photograph or bring in the seed heads so a group of mathematicians could study them. The aim was to determine whether Fibonacci numbers occur in the seed spirals – this has previously been observed, but no large-scale study like this has ever been undertaken. This carries on the work Alan Turing did before he died.
The results of the research are now published – a paper has been published in the Royal Society’s Open Science journal, and the findings indicate that while Fibonacci numbers do often occur, other types of numbers also crop up, including Lucas numbers and other similarly defined number sequences.
Solomon Golomb (1932-2016)
“I’m proud that I’ve lived to see… so many of the things that I’ve worked on being so widely adopted that no one even thinks about where they came from.” ((Solomon W. Golomb – 2016 Laureate of the Franklin Institute in Electrical Engineering)) Solomon Golomb (1932-2016)
Solomon Golomb, who died on Sunday May 1st, was a man who revelled in the key objects in a recreational mathematician’s toolbox: number sequences, shapes and words (in many languages). He also carved out a distinguished career by, broadly speaking, transferring his detailed knowledge of the mathematics behind integer sequences to engineering problems in the nascent field of digital communications, and his discoveries are very much still in use today.
Maths Object: Nobbly Wobbly
My maths object this time is one of my dog’s favourite toys: the Nobbly Wobbly.
In the video, I said it was invented by a mathematician, but Dick Esterle’s bio normally goes “artist, architect, inventor”. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Everyone’s a Mathematician.
It’s a particularly pleasing rubbery ball thing made of six interwoven loops in different colours, invented by Dick Esterle.
On Google+, various people told me the unexpected fact that the outer automorphism group of $S_6$ is hiding inside this dog toy.
I’ve also found this Celebration of Mind livestream starring Dick Esterle from 2013 talking about all sorts of mathematically-shaped toys, including the Nobbly Wobbly.
Katie’s Binary Nails Tutorial – and a puzzle
I’ve just posted my latest YouTube video, in which I explain how to use binary numbers to jazz up your nail varnish:
Alongside this video, I also have an associated puzzle for you to think about.