My collaborators at The Aperiodical, Katie Steckles and Christian Perfect, have launched a new mathematics magazine podcast called All Squared. In the first episode, number one1, Katie and Christian speak to Edmund Harriss about speaking mathematics out loud. Towards the end of the conversation, they speak a little about some of the ambiguity in spoken…
All Squared, Number 1: Maths out loud
We’ve been quietly making plans and gathering material for a new project over the past couple of weeks, after noticing that there’s an unusual paucity of maths podcasts at the moment. Well, that exciting new project is now happening, and it’s a half-hour podcast featuring maths, guests, puzzles and links from the internet. It’s called…
Making sense of all the recent reports on the state of mathematics education
You may be aware of seemingly endless reports in recent years on the state of mathematics education in England. Marie Joubert says that at least 28 such reports have been published since the beginning of 2011. Now Marie is hoping to “‘draw on the wisdom of the mathematics education crowds’ to develop a shared understanding of…
English/Asian mathematics education comparison: what the IoE report actually says
According to a report by the University of London’s Institute of Education, the very best 10-year-old English students are as good at maths as their counterparts around the world, but have fallen behind by around two years by the time they reach their GCSEs. Cue frothy-mouthed calls for more rigour and tougher exams, presumably since…
LMS 150 Year Impact Assessment
The London Mathematical Society will be 150 years old in a couple of years, and we mathematicians always bang on about how maths takes a long time to have impact in the wider world, so they’re asking for examples of maths done in the last 150 years that’s had an impact outside academia. Read more…
Competition to visualise open government data
Who loves data? If we’re talking about the android from Star Trek: TNG, then I do, and if we’re talking about the thing that’s not the plural of anecdotes, then I’m pretty sure the answer is everyone. If you love data, then you’ll definitely love visualising data, and Google have teamed up with the Open…
Not mentioned on The Aperiodical last week – Un-un-free research, MOOCs and cash for arty maths
Yikes! Even with our hard-working new team of News Team news teamsters chopping away at it admirably, our news queue has grown faster than we can deal with. That means it’s time for another bullet list of news! The first edition of the IMA’s new journal Information and Inference (announced previously) came out last December, and everything’s…