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: The Recent Difficulties with RSA; Do we need a maths museum?; Brian Schmidt’s Mathematical Arguement; IBM claims most PhD mathematicians in its employ; Maths grads teaching alert;…
Reading around the Alan Turing Pardon
I have a piece in this week’s Pod Delusion episode 123 at 45:00 on the pardon for Alan Turing. Here are links to some of the bits I talked about in this. I spoke about concerns of overdoing the Turing celebrations, saying: what Turing did was brilliant, but we should celebrate what Turing actually did,…
A puzzle from James Grime about abcdef
Today James Grime tweeted this question/puzzle: Is there a six digit number abcdef such that the following all hold? a+b+c+d+e+f = y ab+cd+ef=10y abc+def=100y If not, show why not. A little tweeting back and forth verified that “ab” means 10a+b not a×b. If you want to have a go at this, don’t read any further…
The True Importance of Friends
A new post is available over at Second-Rate Minds by Samuel Hansen. Why your friends have more friends than you do. That is the rather provocative title of a 1991 paper by Purdue University sociologist Scott Feld. While the title is rather provocative, thankfully it turns out that the statement is built on a solid…
Things to do in London on a Tuesday
Next Tuesday I will spend a day off in London. I am asking people to offer suggestions for things I could do with my time by adding pins to this Google Map: PR’s Day Off. A few people have already added their suggestions but it would be great to hear more. View PR’s Day Off…
George and Julian
Yesterday, the @mathshistory Twitter feed tells me, was the anniversary of the birth of Julian Schwinger (1918-1994), one of the great physicists of the 20th century. (Technically I queued this tweet up but there are a lot of days and a lot of mathematicians to remember…) Schwinger is known to me particularly through his connection…
Ian Stewart on Black-Scholes
Ian Stewart gives us a taste of his new book Seventeen Equations That Changed the World in a Guardian article about the Black-Scholes equation. This, he says: provided a rational way to price a financial contract when it still had time to run… It opened up a new world of ever more complex investments, blossoming…