There are many things I admire about Matt Parker (or, to give him his full title, Friend of the Aperiodical, Mathematician Matt Parker) and his work, but probably top of the list is how he switches, apparently effortlessly, between modes. One minute, he’s showing off a fax machine to a group of hard-core geeks with…
A few months ago, Adam Townsend went to lunch and had a conversation. I wasn’t there, but I imagine the conversation went something like this: Adam: Hello.Smitha: Hello.Adam: How are you?Smitha: Not bad. I’ve had a funny idea, actually.Adam: Yes?Smitha: You know how the \hat command in LaTeΧ puts a caret above a letter?… Well…
Two competitions have been announced by the British Society for the History of Mathematics. Schools The schools competition invites participants to “make a case for the most important/your favourite mathematician in the history of mathematics” by either writing an article or producing a video or multi-media project. This competition is your chance to explore how…
As well as the recent Abel Prize award to Karen Uhlenbeck, here are some other mathematical and related awards from this month.
The Abel Prize for 2019 has been awarded to Karen Uhlenbeck. The citation reads: for her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics.
This Pi Day, Emma Haruka Iwao has announced calculation of \(\pi\) to \( \pi \times 10^{13} = 31,\!415,\!926,\!535,\!897 \) digits, exceeding the previous record of 22 trillion digits set in November 2016.
This used y-cruncher, running Chudnovky’s algorithm. Chudnovky’s algorithm is \( \mathcal{O}(n(\log n)^3)\), making each record more impressive. In a blog post, Emma writes about the benefits of using a cloud cluster, saying the calculation ran on a virtual machine cluster, using
25 nodes for 111.8 days, or 2,795 machine-days (7.6 machine-years), during which time Google Cloud performed thousands of live migrations uninterrupted and with no impact on the calculation process.
Ways to access the digits and fun related bits and bobs are outlined in the blog post.
Pi in the sky: Calculating a record-breaking 31.4 trillion digits of Archimedes’ constant on Google Cloud by Emma Haruka Iwao.
Emma Haruka Iwao smashes pi world record with Google help, BBC News.
Aperiodical guest author Andrew Taylor writes about an intriguing piece of number theory which turns out to also be something else. How many ways are there of writing some natural number $n$ as the sum of two squares? $$ n = p^2 + q^2 $$ I don’t want an answer for some particular $n$. I…