A computer programme has been developed which researchers believe can score “at least 150” on an IQ test. According to British Mensa, which describes itself as “the High IQ Society”, there are many standard IQ tests in use around the world but “on most intelligence tests, average IQ score is 100”. The Mensa websites lists the…
Nominations: Award for statistical excellence in the pharmaceutical industry
Nominations are now open for the award for statistical excellence in the pharmaceutical industry jointly made by the Royal Statistical Society and PSI (Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry). Now in its second year, the award was first made last year to Phil Woodward for “a portfolio-wide implementation of a Bayesian framework for early clinical development…
Talk: Two Dictionaries of Mathematics, 1679 and 1989 by David Nelson
On my book shelf is a paperback of over 460 pages of two column, densely typeset definitions of mathematical terms. The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (Third Edition) is edited by David Nelson. On Friday 2nd March 2012 David Nelson will give a talk to the IMA East Midlands Branch, “Two Dictionaries of Mathematics, 1679 and…
Geometric snow art
A man called Simon Beck has more than his fair share of free time and good ideas. He spends his days walking about in the snow at a French ski resort to create geometric patterns like the Sierpinski triangle, tilings of the plane and optical illusions. He posts photos of his works on his facebook…
Deriving dynamical equations is NP-Hard
This paper has just been accepted by Physical Review Letters: The behavior of any physical system is governed by its underlying dynamical equations. Much of physics is concerned with discovering these dynamical equations and understanding their consequences. In this work, we show that, remarkably, identifying the underlying dynamical equation from any amount of experimental data,…
Fractal dimension in IKEA
A long time ago, I realised that IKEA’s shopfitters must be experts in fractal dimension – they manage to lay out their shop so that you have to walk past every single thing they’re selling. You can’t just nip into IKEA – you have to go through the whole hour-long “It’s A Small World” of…
Picture this!, an interactive problem/puzzle
“PSUM: problem-solving in undergraduate mathematics”, a project we are supporting at work, have produced an interactive problem/puzzle as an early prototype for a virtual problem solving resource package. Picture This! is an interactive problem solving application. You are shown a diagram which somehow relates to two integers. You are asked to change the two integers…