Having posted about Matt Parker’s Fractal Christmas Tree last week, we’ve had quite a few photos of completed trees sent in! Here’s a Tony Hart gallery-style roundup of them.
Math Professor Invents Non-Reversing Mirror
Andrew Hicks, a professor at Drexel University, has invented a new type of curved mirror which shows the reflection without inverting it left-right, as normal plane mirrors do. Although this effect can be achieved by placing two mirrors at right angles and looking at them both along the 45 degree bisector (as anyone who’ve ever…
Keith Devlin’s 5-week survey of maths course is on YouTube
Keith Devlin, of enormous maths MOOC fame, tweeted that his survey course Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible is now available on YouTube. Until now, it had only been available through iTunes University. The course consists of five two-hour lectures, delivered over five weeks. Like Keith’s MOOC, it’s an “intro to maths for grown-ups” course to get people…
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical this week
My name is Aperiodical, king of kings; Look on my news queue, ye Mighty, and despair! Among other lessons not heeded by your fearless editorial trio this week are those of queueing theory. Our news queue has got a bit out of hand, so it’s time to take drastic action. Here’s what we were going…
Math/Maths 124: Potato The Mathematicial Genius
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released. A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: Chinese dog is ‘maths genius,’ according to owner; MoMath Opening; Burgess primary school report; Rushed maths leads to ‘superficial’ learning; TIMSS 2011 International Results in Mathematics; Millions…
MoMath is open!
On the twelfth of the twelfth of the twenty-twelfth, New York’s Museum of Mathematics had its big opening gala. George Hart, who has spent the past few years developing the stuff that would go in the museum, recorded a video in between schmoozing the museum’s first guests to show off the things it contains. [youtube…
Deck the halls with τ of holly, formula-la-laaa!
Christmas is a time for giving, celebrating, family and magic. But did you know it’s also a time for equations? Department store Debenhams has decided to honour this recent Christmas tradition by tasking at least two members of Sheffield University’s undergraduate maths society to come up with formulae for ‘a perfectly decorated Christmas tree‘, picked…