A reader’s Dad is in a combinatoric golf conundrum! Katie Steckles tries to help, with maths.
From the Mailbag: Golfing Combinatorics
The Topological Tverberg Conjecture is False
Attention, Topological Combinatorialists! The topological Tverberg Conjecture, described as ‘a holy grail of topological combinatorics’, is false. The conjecture says that any continuous map of a simplex of dimension $(r−1)(d+1)$ to $\mathbb{R}^d$ maps points from $r$ disjoint faces of the simplex to the same point in $\mathbb{R}^d$. In certain cases the conjecture has been proven true,…
Apiological: mathematical speculations about bees (Part 2: Estimating nest volumes)
This is part 2 of a three-part series of mathematical speculations about bees. Part 1 looked at honeycomb geometry. Honeybees scout for nesting sites in tree cavities and other nooks and crannies, and need to know whether a chamber is large enough to contain all the honey necessary to feed their colony throughout the winter. A volume of less…
Manchester MathsJam recap, January 2015
Manchester’s first MathsJam of 2015 (and indeed, all the other first MathsJams of 2015 in cities all over the world) met on 20th January, rousing us all from a Christmas-induced slumber and gently easing us back into a year of recreational maths. Here’s a round-up of what we did.
Follow Friday: 13/2/15
Remember when we used to do a regular Follow Friday post, recommending mathematically interesting Twitter accounts? Well, this is like that, only not hugely regular. Enjoy it while it lasts!
Axis is Missile Command for mathematicians
Axis is a retro-styled game a bit like Missile Command crossed with a graphing calcuator. Instead of pointing a turret and trying to estimate a parabolic trajectory ending at one of your enemies, your shot follows the path of any function $y=f(x)$ you can think of.
Witness the awesome power of maths!
This happened on the BBC’s University Challenge this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOOsLvSfQAY&feature=youtu.be Jeremy Paxman might never recover from having his mind so thoroughly blown.