Steve Mills, senior vice president at IBM recently boasted the company was the world’s largest employer of PhD mathematicians. It is not certain whether this is true but interesting to see them making the boast. According to a story at cio.co.uk, Mills said: if IBM can do analytics for a power grid, it can also…
Prime number puzzles from Matt Parker
As part of the Telegraph numeracy campaign “Making Britain Count”, Matt Parker’s second set of puzzles are online. This time they are themed around prime numbers. Telegraph: Numeracy campaign: More maths puzzles by Matt Parker.
Barriers to teaching
Lecturer in Mathematics.School of Mathematics, University of Excellence.Competitive salary. Applications are invited for the post of Lecturer in Mathematics. The University of Excellence is ambitious for the future, priding itself on its commitment to world-leading research and investment in an outstanding research environment. The opportunity is available to join a dynamic, highly esteemed and international…
Math/Maths 86: Complex Pony Tails
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…