There is a fine tradition of mathematicians with mathematics on their tombstones. What immediately springs to mind is Ludolph Van Ceulen and Jacob Bernoulli. Van Ceulen calculated $\pi$ to 35 decimal places; his grave carried both his lower bound of 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288 and his upper bound of 3.14159265358979323846264338327950289. Bernoulli asked for a logarithmic spiral on his…
Eugenia Cheng is at it again
Dr Eugenia Cheng, category theorist, has accepted some money from Pizza Express in return for writing some nonsense about pizzas. This doesn’t really merit a post here, apart from to point out that Dr Cheng very scrupulously denied taking any kind of payment the last time she got a “formula for the perfect X” story…
Carnival of Mathematics 103
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of September, and compiled by Evelyn Lamb, is now online at Roots of Unity. 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.
BBC News webchat with Simon Singh
Today, author Simon Singh took part in a Twitter-based webchat for the BBC News website, taking questions about his new book on Maths in the Simpsons, and mathematics in general. Here’s how it all went down.
My teaching in 2013/14
Some people have expressed an interest in what I am teaching this year. Here it is.
Jos’ Perfect Cuboid
Inspired by our Open Season post on the Perfect Cuboid earlier this year, Aperiodical reader Jos Schouten wrote to us describing his work on the problem over the past 20 years. He’s looking for someone to help take his work further. Are you up to the challenge? Survey of the Perfect Cuboid This article is…
All Squared, Number 9: Miscellanea with CP and Cushing
We have an unusual All Squared podcast for you this time. My good friend David Cushing has been asking to do a podcast for absolutely ages. We couldn’t decide on a single topic to talk about, so instead I suggested we just sit down and chat about maths in general, like we do when there isn’t…