This is a roundup of things which happened at Manchester MathsJam, February 2012. First, we discuss a puzzle I found on Futility Closet, a blog of curiosities by Greg Ross which is sometimes mathematical. The Martian Census Bureau compiled the marital history of every male and female Martian, living and dead: Never married: 6,823,041; Married…
I listened to Samuel Hansen’s interview with local-boy-made-good Neil deGrasse Tyson (that’s an in joke for those who have listened, so you’d better go and listen, right?). They speak about mathematics in astrophysics (“math in astrophysic”?), space exploration & research, outreach and more. In talking mathematics, Dr Tyson covers an unplanned impact of mathematics and…
IMA members receive, as part of their subscription, copies of Mathematics Today. The original IMA members’ magazine was the IMA Bulletin, first published in 1965 following the founding of the institute in 1964. In 1996 the Bulletin re-branded as Mathematics Today, though kept the numbering system, so the most recent issue I received is volume…
The Archivist at King’s College, Cambridge has put their collection of material by and about Alan Turing online at www.turingarchive.org. This clipping of a newspaper report about Turing’s death, with annotations from his mother, is enormously sad.
• Puzzle 1. Suppose I have a box of jewels. The average value of a jewel in the box is \$10. I randomly pull one out of the box. What’s the probability that its value is at least \$100? • Puzzle 2. Suppose I have a box full of numbers—they can be arbitrary real numbers. Their average is zero,…
BibliOdyssey has posted some very old perspective drawings of polyhedra and other geometric shapes.
Thinking I was being too obvious, particularly having just told Twitter I was in Russell Square, I tweeted a photo of the base of a pillar as a clue to my next location. I hadn’t intended this to be a stop on my trip as I’ve been before but, having had lunch by the fountain…