“Life moves very fast. It rushes from Heaven to Hell in a matter of seconds.” ― Paulo Coelho This week, I was suddenly reminded of a fact I’d been meaning to keep track of, and I was disappointed to discover that even though I always endeavour to remember birthdays and holidays (mainly due to a system…
This tweet by YouGov appeared on my feed: Forget pepperoni – mushroom is Britain's most liked pizza topping (65%), followed by onion (62%) and then ham (61%) https://t.co/5kYikXOEtF pic.twitter.com/AJezMfJHbk — YouGov (@YouGov) March 6, 2017 Actually, for the purposes of criticism and comment, here’s a local copy of the image: It should immediately set your…
Timothy Chow of MIT has proposed a new Polymath project: resolve Rota’s basis conjecture. What’s that? It’s this: … if $B_1$, $B_2$, $\ldots$, $B_n$ are $n$ bases of an $n$-dimensional vector space $V$ (not necessarily distinct or disjoint), then there exists an $n \times n$ grid of vectors ($v_{ij}$) such that 1. the $n$ vectors…
Fan of the site Ravi Fernando has written in to tell us about his high score at the “is this prime?” game: a cool century! I’ve been a fan of your “Is this prime?” game for a while, and after seeing your blog post from last May, I thought I’d say hi and send you some high…
It was George Boole’s bicentenary in 2015, so the Heslam Trust is a bit slow to reveal its plans to erect a statue of the great man in his home town of Lincoln. The sculptors, Martin Jennings and Antony Dufort, have come up with a few designs for the statue, and they’d like the public to vote…
Why should I worry about dying? It’s not going to happen in my lifetime! Raymond Smullyan, This Book Needs No Title (1986) This week, the mathematical community has lost not one but two of its most beloved practitioners. Earlier this week, Swedish statistician Hans Rosling passed away aged 68, and today it’s been announced that author…
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of January, and compiled by Manan, is now online at Math Misery. 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.