Prof Sir Tim Gowers has published a couple of very interesting posts on his blog this week, explaining his thinking behind a couple of announcements to do with Open Access.
Registration opens for second run of Keith Devlin’s MOOC
If you were interested in Keith Devlin’s Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) Introduction to Mathematical Thinking in the autumn but heard about it too late, didn’t have time to take part, or signed up but couldn’t keep on top of the course, you may be pleased to hear that Keith has announced plans for the…
The perfect formula for mathsiness
It’s mid-January, which means it’s time for the tabloids to trot out their annual “this is the most miserable day of the whole year!” story — before they spend the rest of the year blaming immigration, youth and political correctness for problems they’ve spent the last year stoking up. Ahem.
Aperiodcast – Christiansmas Eve 2013
After two months we’ve finally done another podcast! We completely forgot even the most rudimentary things about how to do a podcast. Sorry. In this episode, we talked about: Mathematical Christmas cracker jokes Fractal Christmas trees Posts from MathsJam speakers – Tom Button on Radii of Polyhedra and Phil Harvey on AS Results and Batting…
The nonsense math effect
This week, the Freakonomics blog covered research by Stockholm University’s Kimmo Eriksson, which found that including a mathematical equation in the abstract of a research paper made scholars from different fields judge the research to be ‘of higher quality’, even though the equation is unrelated to the work and also complete nonsense. The study included…
Math/Maths 127: Hiatus Begins
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released. A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. The podcast is going on hiatus for a few months, so Samuel and Peter give a short goodbye, with: mathematical Christmas presents; a list of back-episodes to listen to on special topics or with…
The Aperiodical’s Possibly Annual Awards for Mathematical Achievement
Christian Perfect: 2012 was an alright year. At the very least, all of it happened, which is better than some had predicted. And since 2012 did happen, we are obliged by the Laws of Something to give out some awards. Katie Steckles: Of course, the most noteworthy thing which happened in 2012 was the creation…