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: Math paper retracted because it ‘contains no scientific content’; Top Majors of 2022; New Journals of Negative Results; New UK law obliges publishing of public data in…
Life imitates Life
A while ago somebody created a simulation of Conway’s Game of Life inside a bigger version of the Game of Life. Now, YouTube user Phillip Bradbury has created a very simple — and aurally pleasing ((the Shepard tone is used to create the illusion of a sound constantly increasing in pitch)) — video showing it in action.…
Parallel postulate not proven after all – paper retracted as having “no scientific content”
A paper published in the January 2010 issue of Computers & Mathematics with Applications which, according to Times Higher Education, “used unspecified computer ‘magnification technology’ to provide the first proof of a Euclidean axiom called the ‘parallel postulate’”, has been withdrawn by the publisher.
Curved Crease Sculptures by Erik and Martin Demaine
Curved Crease Sculptures by Erik and Martin Demaine: The shapes remind me of the Danse Serpentine.
MAA Mathematical Petting Zoo
The MAA recently displayed a mathematical petting zoo at the USA Science & Engineering Festival, along with a slideshow of pictures from their MAA Found Math collection. The page about the event doesn’t have any pictures on it but it does have lots of links to the artists and their portfolios. The usual suspects are represented…
Follow the timeline of Alan Turing’s life
The Science Museum in London have created a Facebook timeline of Alan Turing’s life and events afterwards. It’s an excellent use of the new Timeline feature – you can scroll up and down the timeline from Turing’s birth to the current day, which contains plenty on his codebreaking and work with early computers as well…
Some infinities (and egos) are bigger than others
Here’s a tale of a rational (or irrational?) legal battle from the 1990s re: Cantor’s diagonal argument. Cantor’s diagonal argument from 1891 was truly revolutionary: an ingenious way to demonstrate that no matter what proposed list of all real numbers (or, say, just those between $0$ and $1$) is put forth, it’s easy to find…