A team led by Thomas Hales has announced a formal proof of the Kepler conjecture – one of the oldest problems in geometry – which states that no packing of equally sized spheres in 3-dimensional space is more efficient than the face-centred cubic packing (pictured right), or hexagonal close packing.
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Small gaps between large gaps between primes results
The big news last year was the quest to find a lower bound for the gap between pairs of large primes, started by Yitang Zhang and carried on chiefly by Terry Tao and the fresh-faced James Maynard.
Now that progress on the twin prime conjecture has slowed down, they’ve both turned their attentions toward the opposite question: what’s the biggest gap between subsequent small primes?
We’re Stuck! Help develop mathematical theatre
Just when you thought you’d seen enough mathematical theatre projects, here’s another one. We’re Stuck! is an Arts Council funded piece of interactive theatre aimed at children aged 7-12 and their families. The project will explore the idea that getting stuck is part of doing maths, and not something to be feared. The aim is to promote the idea of persisting with maths, even when it’s difficult – and they’re looking for your help!
2014 Fields Medals awarded – coverage round-up
At this week’s International Congress of Mathematics, in Seoul, Korea, the winners of the 2014 Fields Medal were announced. The medals, which were established in 1936, and are awarded every four years to four different mathematicians, recognise achievement in mathematics research.
Maths at the British Science Festival 2014
Since the British Science Festival’s programme of events for the 2014 festival is now online, you can search through it to find all the mathematical/maths-related events which will be taking place this September in Birmingham. But this is a full-service maths blog, and so you don’t have to because we’ve done it for you. (If you’d rather take a look yourself, the full listing is on the BSA website).
Third Christopher Zeeman Medal to go to Marcus du Sautoy
The Christopher Zeeman Medal for the Promotion of Mathematics to the Public for 2014 has been awarded to Professor Marcus du Sautoy of the University of Oxford.
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical this month – August 2014
As usual in the summer, we’ve all been off doing our own things and consequently neglecting the news queue. Time to break out our tried-and-tested solution: a combo-post summarising everything we failed to cover in depth, before it goes completely out of date.
The Royal Society has Opinions about Education
The Royal Society has released a report outlining their idea of what science and maths education should look like in the future. It’s over a hundred pages long, but they’ve made a nice website to go along with it, with pages summarising their recommendations for things like “stability for curricula” and the teaching profession.
More information: The Royal Society’s vision for science and mathematics education
Cédric Villani is setting up a Maths Museum in Paris
The 2010 Fields Medal winner Cédric Villani announced at Copenhagen’s Euroscience Open Forum last month that there will be a museum dedicated to mathematics, based at the Institut Henri Poincaré, where he is the director. It’s expected to open in 2018.
Source: Cédric Villani annonce la création d’un musée des mathématiques à Paris, in Sciences et Avenir (in French)
Science Magazine establishes a Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors
In response to recent increases in flawed quantitative analysis and statistical bias in papers, Science has announced its intention to establish a Statistical Board of Reviewing Editors to provide better oversight on data interpretation. Recognising that a technical reviewer may not also be fluent in data analysis, the panel will consist of experts in stats and data analysis, and will be sent papers identified by their regular Board of Reviewing Editors (BoRE) as being in need of further scrutiny. Hooray for maths!
More information
Science Magazine raises its statistical bar. Will we? at Chris Blattman’s blog
Raising the Bar, at Science (free registration required to view, because of Science reasons)
Science joins push to screen statistics in papers in the Nature blog
ASA launches ‘This is Statistics’
The American Statistical Association, in a push to provide a new perspective on a subject often misunderstood and considered to be boring, has launched This is Statistics, a new website full of videos, applets and articles outlining how useful and interesting stats can be. It’s aimed at students, parents and educators and includes quizes and case studies of how stats has helped science change lives.
Website: This is Statistics