Every year, Donald Knuth gives a Christmas lecture at Stanford. This year, he wanted to talk about a conjecture he’s recently investigated. It’s just over an hour long. Sit down with a warm drink and enjoy some interesting recreational maths from the master.
A winning competition
As part of this year’s MathsJam gathering, as for the last few years, we held a competition competition (you may have seen Peter’s recent post about his entry to the same event in 2014). My competition was the winner, and I thought I’d share with you some of the entries, as I very much enjoyed…
“Pariah Moonshine” Part III: Pariah Groups, Prime Factorizations, and Points on Elliptic Curves
In Part I of this series of posts, I introduced the sporadic groups, finite groups of symmetries which aren’t the symmetries of any obvious categories of shapes. The sporadic groups in turn are classified into the Happy Family, headed by the Monster group, and the Pariahs. In Part II, I discussed Monstrous Moonshine, the connection…
Review: The Maths Behind… by Colin Beveridge
Ed Rochead sent us this review of Aperiodipal Colin Beveridge’s latest pop maths book. This book is written to answer the question ‘when would you ever use maths in everyday life?’ It therefore focuses on applied maths, across a surprisingly wide breadth of applications. The book is organised into sections such as ‘the human world’,…
Carnival of Mathematics 152
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of November, and compiled by TD, is now online at Chalkdust Magazine. The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
AMS Communication Awards
Photo of Vi Hart: M Eifler, 2017 (CC by 4.0). Photo of Matt Parker: Steve Ullathorne
The American Math Society’s Joint Policy Board for Mathematics has announced the winners of its 2018 Communication award. This year’s winners are internet maths wizard/YouTube star Vi Hart, and Aperiodipal and Stand-up Mathematician Matt Parker.
Both produce brilliant, enjoyable and illuminating mathematical videos (Vi Hart, Matt Parker), as well as numerous other projects – Vi Hart has worked with Khan Academy, produced online interactive mathematical stories, and done some super work on hyperbolic/4D virtual reality, while Parker performs with science comedy team Festival of the Spoken Nerd, has started the MathsJam pub maths movement, has written a popular maths book, and appears regularly on TV and radio.
The award includes a prize of $2,000, and aims to encourage high-quality communicators of mathematics. We think they’ve made a good choice!
More information
News post on the AMS website
About the AMS JPBM Communication prize
2018 Christopher Zeeman Medal nominations open
The IMA/LMS Zeeman Medal has been awarded every two years since 2008, to an individual, to “recognise and acknowledge the contributions of mathematicians involved in promoting mathematics to the public and engaging with the public in mathematics in the UK, and demonstrate that such activities are valued by the societies and the mathematical community at large and are a part of a mathematician’s roles and responsibilities”. The nomination process is now open for 2018, and details of eligibility and how to make a nomination are at the link below.