Since June, Peter Rowlett and Samuel Hansen have been recording a weekly transatlantic chat about mathematics news called the Math/Maths Podcast. Peter is the “maths” side of the conversation from Nottingham, England, and Samuel is the “math” side from Las Vegas, USA. In November 2010 Samuel will visit Peter in Nottingham for a week of…
Math/Maths Podcast Live Recording
In November, Samuel Hansen will visit the UK for, at least, MathsJam, the 13th IMA Early Career Mathematicians Conference, a tour of maths and computing history in Nottingham and… a live recording of the Math/Maths Podcast at the University of Greenwich. (That’s live in the sense of “before an audience”, rather than “streamed live”.) We’re…
Web resources for a 14 year old girl struggling with maths & confidence
Yesterday on Twitter I asked a question that had been asked of me: “Help: looking for web resources for 14 year old girl struggling with maths, particularly fractions, & maths confidence.“ I love Twitter for this kind of thing. People are so helpful. I am grateful to @SteelingSeconds, @Samuel_Hansen, @fittdr, @Domestic_jules, @ColetteWeston, @nick4glengate and @christianp…
Who are your important living mathematicians?
Paywall notwithstanding, you may have seen today the Times’ Eureka magazine celebrating science with a list of “the 100 most important people in British science and engineering“. With apologies for decisions made and promise of causing “some debate” from the Editor. So the question is: where are the mathematicians? Andrew Wiles is top, at #41.…
Ed & me
Here’s an update. If you didn’t read ‘Is Ed Miliband a “maths geek”?‘ now is a good time. So I didn’t get a reply from Ed, nor from anyone with concrete knowledge of his maths geek status. (Though I am grateful to @ColinTGraham, @MitchKeller, @Tysess and @stecks for re-tweeting my question to him.) But here…
Is Ed Miliband a "maths geek"?
In an article “Ed Miliband: Self-confessed maths ‘geek’ with a talent for diplomacy”, the Telegraph claimed the new leader of the opposition is a “self-confessed maths ‘geek’” but where, I wondered, did he “confess” it? James Grime adds a corollary: what did he mean by ‘maths geek’, anyway? In other words, we are asking, is…
How I wish I could calculate #pihunt
Today I spent an enjoyable time at Pi-hunting – the story of a mathematical obsession, run by the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) at the British Science Festival 2010. Part of this included a presentation by Noel-Ann Bradshaw on mnemonics to remember the digits of pi. An example is the following: How…