Recently, Samuel Hansen blogged*: I am an overly-active amateur podcast host. This has been a huge week for me as far as podcast releases have gone, with a total of four different, and new, podcasts available to download this week: The ACMEScience Podcasts Combinations and Permutations Episode 62: Jeff Goldblum on a Tilt-a-Whirl 4 mathematicians…
400 words in 30 minutes on why I took maths further
Goal: 400 words researched and written in half and hour. For me, for practice. Corrections welcome in the comments. This time I try to answer a question from Ruby Childs: “why did you study mathematics?” Recently we recorded a Math/Maths Podcast with Ruby as a special guest and we discussed issues around this question. Why…
400 words in 30 minutes on sexy primes
Goal: 400 words researched and written in half and hour. For me, for practice. Corrections welcome in the comments. ∞ With Valentine’s Day upon us a seemingly appropriate mathematical topic is sexy primes. These numbers surely have some attraction to those in the mood for love.In fact, the “sexy” in “sexy primes” is a reference…
400 words in 30 minutes on chaos and the weather
Goal: 400 words researched and written in half and hour. For me, for practice. Corrections welcome in the comments. ∞ Why does the weather forecast only go a few days into the future, and why are they so often wrong about what will happen in a couple of days time? If they know where the…
Pedantry on Euler and masts
I listened to the second episode of A Brief History of Mathematics on Euler yesterday. I was quite taken with a quote from Euler which, to me, says something of the potential dangers of the application of mathematics to the real world. The relevant section of the programme is:
Cosmic-Ray Research Centre and Cold War Helter-Skelter in Secret Cave City
Samuel Hansen directed me to this article: “The secret cave city under Nottingham“. The article is highlighting The Nottingham Caves Survey, who offer: The Nottingham Caves Survey is in the process of recording all of Nottingham’s 450+ sandstone caves. The project is now underway and we are surveying caves even as you read this. Keep…
Math/Maths in Google Books Ngrams
Google Books Ngram Viewer is a Google labs product for comparing terms in books between 1500 and 2008. The idea seems to be to track trends in language. An interesting idea. Anyway, both Christian Perfect (@christianp) and Daniel Demski (@dranorter) sent me the Ngram comparing “math” with “maths”. Christian observed: “bad news: it looks like…