The Institute of Mathematics and its Applications have launched a YouTube channel.
World record mass Rubik’s Cube solving attempt in aid of youth homelessness charity
In June 2011 Depaul UK, a youth homelessness charity, broke a world record by having over 300 people in one place solving the Rubik’s cube at the same time. You can view photos of the event on their Flickr page and watch a video covering the attempt below.
Today only: The Geek Atlas ebook half price
I don’t really intend this to be an advert but for a while now I’ve half intended to pick up a copy of John Graham-Cumming’s The Geek Atlas. I just bought a DRM-free ebook half price as part of an International Day Against DRM promotion.
Protection of Freedoms Act 2012
One of the reasons given against a pardon for Alan Turing in a November 2011 blog post by John Graham-Cumming (who successfully campaigned for a Turing apology in 2009) was that the Protection of Freedoms bill, if passed, would make a pardon unnecessary. This is because this specifically allows for the disregarding of convictions under…
Wikipedia adds MathJax display option
According to a post by Frédéric Wang on the Mozilla MathML mailing list, Wikipedia now supports rendering mathematics via MathJax (and through it, MathML). Wang says: Today, a new Math rendering mode has been added to Wikipedia. You need a Wikipedia account to use it. In My preferences => Appearance => Math, choose “MathJax”. Once enabled,…
Feminine role models found to not motivate girls to study maths
Diana Betz and Denise Sekaquaptewa conducted two studies in the USA into attempts to counter stereotypes, reported in a University of Michigan press release.
Mathematical thinking and religious belief
According to this paper, published this week in Science, and described in this article from Psychology Today, the answer you give to the following simple maths question is a predictor of whether or not you are likely to be religious: Q: If a baseball and bat cost $\$110$, and the bat costs $\$100$ more than the ball,…