The last two weeks my first year mathematicians and I have covered Taylor series.This means that several times I’ve had the conversation that goes “What’s $0!$?” “It’s $1$.” “Oh, erm, right. Why again?” “Because it works.” This may not be a completely satisfactory answer! One of my students, Callum Mulligan, tweeted this question. Why does…
Puzzlebomb – February 2014
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 26 of Puzzlebomb, for February 2014, can be found here: Puzzlebomb – Issue 26 – February 2014 The solutions to Issue 26 can be found here: Puzzlebomb – Issue 26 – February 2014 – Solutions Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Open Problems in Mathematics, a new open access journal
Here’s a nice idea: a journal for people to write about open problems, with the aim of inspiring someone to have a go at solving them. Open Problems in Mathematics is a new open-access journal set up by Krzysztof Burdzy and a few others, and it’s online now.
An infinite series of blog posts which sums to -1/12
Many of you who are aware of the internet will have noticed that some mild controversy has surrounded a recent Numberphile video, posted last week: [youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww]
Festival of the Spoken Nerd in geographical relocation shocker
Anticapitalists, please note: This post is categorised “not-directly-paid-for friendertisement”. We’re plugging a thing our friends do because we think it’s good, but alas, they make money off it. Please read with caution. Fans of mathematics and science in general will be pleased to hear that they no longer have to travel long distances to see…
Spot the Ball (he’s the one talking about maths)
TV maths advocate and certified old person Johnny Ball is hoping to stage what will be a record-breaking World’s Largest Maths Lesson, by filling a stadium with kids and talking to them all about maths at the same time. The event will take place on March 19th, during National Science and Engineering week, and will…
Proof News: Designs exist!
The year in proofs has started with a big result in combinatorics: the existence conjecture for designs. As usual, weightier minds than ours have comprehensively explained the result, so I’ll just give a brief summary of the problem and then some links.