Since 2010, I’ve been maintaining a list of “interesting esoterica” – papers, books, essays and poems that I find interesting entirely on their own merits. It’s mainly bits of esoteric maths – hence the name – but I’ve also included quite a few things just because they have amusing titles. The main idea is that when…
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…
“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…
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of April, and compiled by Kartik, is now online at Comfortably Numbered. 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.
It’s Eurovision time again! A chance for everyone to enjoy musical performances that are either good or so bad they’re good, ridiculous staging, and hilarious costumes, all sprinkled with a gently sarcastic Irish voiceover (if you’re lucky enough to be watching in the UK). BUT WHAT’S THIS? They’ve changed the voting system? Don’t worry – some…
My maths object this time is one of my dog’s favourite toys: the Nobbly Wobbly. 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 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.