An article in Ars Technica reports on an investigation of the area and ages of volcanic calderas and the duration of volcanic eruptions between 1900 and 2009 in relation to Benford’s Law. Apparently Benford’s laws fit the eruption duration data “very well” and caldera areas offer “pretty good” fit, though the latter indicated that “some…
Biography of Turing by his mother republished
Barry Cooper, Professor of Pure Mathematics at Leeds and Chair of the Turing Centenary Advisory Committee, writes in the Guardian a personal account of an interest in Turing and his efforts to get the limited edition biography written by Turing’s mother Sara republished. Written from a mother’s viewpoint, Sara provides a unique insight into the…
Running model in reverse to determine rate of extinction not reliable
An article on the BBC News website outlines methods for determining numbers used in measures of biodiversity loss, such as the claim by the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2007 that we are “experiencing the greatest wave of extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs”. One problem, the BBC explains, is that No-one knows how…
Alan Turing papers on code breaking released by GCHQ
The BBC reports that two papers by Alan Turing, believed to have been written while he was working at Bletchley Park, have been released by GCHQ. The papers, ‘The Applications of Probability to Crypt’, and ‘Paper on the Statistics of Repetitions’, apparently use mathematical analysis to try and determine which are the more likely Enigma…
Inclusion and Exclusion and the new GMAT
Dublin native Colm Mulcahy has been in the Department of Mathematics at Spelman College since 1988. His interests include algebra, number theory, geometry and mathematical card principles and effects. Follow him on Twitter at @CardColm and also check out @WWMGT. The last question, under the heading “Two-Part Analysis”, at the end of this NYT article (from…
Video: A Klein Slinky
This is an old video I made showing how to make a Slinky look like a Klein bottle. It’s the easiest way of making a Klein bottle that I know of!
Introducing The Aperiodical
You may have noticed a new look here on Travels in a Mathematical World. For a while this blog was designed to look like a page from my website peterrowlett.net, but now it is different. This is because I have joined Katie Steckles and Christian Perfect in a collaborative blogging endeavour we’re calling The Aperiodical.…