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: Turing Centenary; Shouryya Ray, 16-Year-Old ‘Genius,’ Didn’t Actually Solve Newton’s 350-Year-Old Mathematical Problem; LMS Good Practice Scheme on Women in Mathematics; On “Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Contains Strategies…
Spelling Bees Puzzle Blog
Hello. I’ve been talked into writing another blog post about my latest puzzle to appear in the Puzzlebomb. Spelling Bees appeared in the May and June issues. The solver is presented with a honeycomb grid containing letters and one bee (of the insect variety; the grid may contain several or no Bs). Their task is…
An answer to what Shouryya Ray’s ‘unsolved Newton problem’ was
You may remember a story, widely reported, that 16 year old student Shouryya Ray from Dresden had solved “puzzles posed by Sir Isaac Newton that have baffled mathematicians for 350 years“. You may have read our write up of this, which concluded that it is likely that some piece of impressive work has been completed…
Manchester MathsJam June 2012 Recap
Having been absent from the May MathsJam, I have been promised a writeup by Manchester MathsJam regular and sometime Aperiodical article-writer Andrew Taylor. This has not yet arrived, and in the interests of making things as temporally confusing as possible, I’m going to post the June writeup now and let that one happen whenever it…
Turing Round Up
Today is the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth. Turing did not just one but several hugely important things during his life, none of which were properly appreciated while he lived or for a long time after he died. In the run up to his centenary, a campaign to make people aware of Turing and…
Bletchley Park Turing First Day Cover
For my recent birthday I was given a wonderful present: a special UK stamp commemorating Alan Turing, who was born 100 years ago today. The stamp was issued by the Royal Mail not for the Turing centenary but as one of a series of special stamp sets to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. This stamp…
Unusual prime number competition results
Author Robin Sloan offered a simple competition: give me a prime number of your choosing. I’ll send books to the five people who choose the lowest unique prime numbers. So, if you pick 2 but seven other people pick 2, no book for you. If you pick 3 and no one else picks 3, you…