The new live DVD from science comedy trio Festival of the Spoken Nerd, Just for Graphs, is out now, and we’ve been sent a copy to review. We got together a pile of appropriately nerdy science fans to watch (left), and here’s what we thought.
This post is part of a series of posts by guest author Joshua Holden. I ended Part I with the observation that the Monster group was connected with the symmetries of a group sitting in 196883-dimensional space, whereas the number 196884 appeared as part of a function used in number theory, the study of the…
A couple of weekends ago was the big MathsJam gathering (I might call it a recreational maths conference, but this is discouraged). Two of the delightful sideshows, alongside an excellent series of talks, were the competitions. The Baking Competition is fairly straightforward, with prizes for “best flavour, best presentation, and best maths”: The first will…
Here’s a round-up of a few news stories we’ve not had chance to write about this month.
You may have noticed Aperiodical team members Paul and I were blogging from the Heidelberg Laureate Forum back in September. The HLF is an opportunity for young researchers (PhD, MSc and post-doc) to meet the winners of prestigious prizes in maths and computer science, including the Abel Prize, Fields Medal, ACM AM Turing Prize and Nevanlinna prize.
The next HLF will take place in September 2018, and applications open today for Young Researchers who want to participate. If you’re a maths or computer science researcher and want to be invited on a trip to Germany with lots of interesting talks, delicious food and good company, you can apply on the HLF website from today.
You may recall a few years ago we posted about a crowdfunded mathematical board game called Three Sticks. Well, the team behind it are at it again and have a new concept for a game, called Mind Your Numbers.If you hadn’t heard of Dance Your PhD, it’s one of many competitions open to researchers who want to communicate their work in interesting ways – although it’s unique in that it challenges people to interpret their research topic in the form of a dance.