The table never lies, or so they say. So when Manchester City were crowned Premier League Champions last week everyone seemed to agree that they were the best team in the league. As Roberto Mancini said, they had scored more than United and conceded less and beaten them twice in the league. Although United finished…
Alex Bellos wants to know the world’s most random number
Alex Bellos, author of Alex’s Adventures in Numberland / Here’s Looking at Euclid, has started another survey about numbers, following his survey to find the world’s favourite number. This time round, he wants “random” numbers. Answering the survey is very easy: just go to randomnumberservey.net and type a number in the box. Alex says he hopes to…
Like everybody else, you too can be unique. Just keep shuffling
The first take-home lesson of this note is that you too can be unique. You’ll have to keep shuffling to get there, but it is an attainable goal. Several years ago it dawned on me that the number of possible ways to order or permute the cards in a standard deck of size $52$ was…
Has schoolboy genius solved problems that baffled mathematicians for centuries?
The Daily Mail reports that a “schoolboy ‘genius’” has solved “puzzles” “posed by” Issac Newton that have “baffled mathematicians for 350 years”. There are many nonsense warning signs but also hints that something interesting is going on.
Festival Of The Spoken Nerd UK Tour
Festival Of The Spoken Nerd, the “comedy night for the insatiably sci-curious” hosted by Helen Arney, Matt Parker and Steve Mould, is going on tour.
Eric Schmidt wants Britain to want to be the best at maths
Sigh.
Call for submissions: articles on the Maths of Planet Earth for Mathematics Today special issue
The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications has launched a call for submissions for a special issue of its magazine Mathematics Today on the Mathematics of Planet Earth.