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…
Rising chair by Robert van Embricqs
Rising chair by Robert van Embricqs:
Pricing bot interactions
Carlos Bueno writes about a book “Computer Game Bot Turing Test”. This, he says, is: one of over 100,000 “books” “written” by a Markov chain running over random Wikipedia articles, bundled up and sold online for a ridiculous price. The publisher, Betascript, is notorious for this kind of thing. He writes that the pricing bots…
Almost all above average
This morning James Grime tweeted about a BBC News article, “‘Third of UK postcodes’ have slow broadband speeds“. This quotes Julia Stent, director of telecoms at uSwitch saying: Britain might be riding the wave of a super-fast broadband revolution, but for 49% who get less than the national average broadband speed, the wave isn’t causing…
Newcastle MathsJam February 2012 Recap
February’s MathsJam was loads of fun! We had a record attendance of 14 cheery people who just about managed to fit around the biggest table in the Charles Grey. After last month’s puzzlocalypse, which left me for over a week unable to count the toes on my feet, I wanted to have a nice relaxed…