Having enjoyed a quick dip into the British Museum I headed to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The Camden Council website describes Lincoln’s Inn Fields as “the largest square in London and the oldest in Camden”, noting that “there has been public open space here since at least the 12th century” and the space was once “popular…
Jonathan Millican wins UK Cyber Security Challenge
This BBC press release/story informs us that a Cambridge computer science student called Jonathan Millican has won the UK Cyber Security Challenge. The BBC story described the competition as “GCHQ-backed”, which made me think it was about canyoucrackit.co.uk, but that seems not to be the case. This thing was apparently a series of competitions sponsored by…
Math/Maths 88: Entertaining, or illegal?
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: Haptic Math App; model of how buds grow into leaves; Mathematical Model Explains How Hosts Survive Parasite Attacks; Sperm Can Do Calculus; Hit game shows like Deal…
Aperiodical Round Up – follow Brits and draw Rubik’s cube cartoon, says the most useless law in the solar system
Hello. It’s been a while since the last Aperiodical. That’s exactly how long it takes me to prepare and write each issue, so here we are. “Here” is not where it used to be, so I should explain — The Aperiodical is now the name of a big maths conblogerate, of which these untimely collections…
Are these game shows so lacking in skill they’re gambling?
The Mail on Sunday is reporting that “some of Britain’s most popular TV game shows could be forced off the air after regulators launched a probe into whether they constitute gambling”. The paper claims that game shows Deal Or No Deal, Red Or Black? and a proposal to revive Play Your Cards Right “could be breaking…
Another black and white hats puzzle
A classic maths puzzle involves a line of one hundred prisoners, who have each been given a black or white hat by their nefarious captor, and must each correctly shout out the colour of their hat to win freedom. The twist is that the prisoners don’t know the colour of their own hat, and though…
New model may explain leaf growth
Leaves don’t just grow equally in all directions, or they would have a regular shape. To understand how a few cells give rise to such complex structures as leaves is described in the abstract of a new paper in Science as “a major challenge in biology”. The paper presents a new model that shows how…