Here’s a roundup of some news stories that slipped past our highly trained news snipers.
You're reading: Posts Tagged: Alan Turing
Maths at the Fringe
Starting next week, the historic city of Edinburgh will be taken over by entertainers of all types, performing comedy, dance, theatre and music, entertaining visitors to their massive world-famous festival fringe. Since discerning mathematicians sometimes also enjoy being entertained, I thought I’d write a roundup of the shows maths has non-empty intersection with.
First up, since we haven’t mentioned him in a while, it’s Alan Turing! No, his reanimated corpse isn’t performing edgy stand-up, but theatre company Idle Motion is performing a visual theatre piece entitled That Is All You Need To Know, celebrating the work of Bletchley Park codebreakers. Alan Turing Alan Turing Alan Turing.
The Maths of Star Trek: The Original Series (Part II)
This is the second in a series of posts about the maths of Star Trek. Part I covered the probability of survival while wearing a red shirt.
Turing: THE MUSICAL!
I can’t believe I’m writing another “Mathematical topic: THE MUSICAL!” post so soon after the last one.
This time, the New Diorama Theatre is putting on The Universal Machine: a new musical about the life and death of Alan Turing. Here’s the blurb:
Let’s ture to the max!
A new study from Prof. Lawks A. Mercy and Dr. O. Goode-Griefe of the Institute of Blogging Studies indicates that we have published absolutely loads of posts about Alan Turing this year, the Alan Turing Year. We’ve posted about Alan Turing events, Alan Turing facts, Alan Turing competitions and O mercy me have we posted about Alan Turing petitions.
So this is the last Turing post of 2012. I’ve been saving this thing up so it can be the last Turing post this year and on Wednesday morning we can put the whole mad shebang behind us.
What I’d like to bring your attention to is nothing so demanding of your attention as a petition or a campaign, but a little suggestion for a simple way to commemorate Alan Turing: Donald A. Knuth has posted on his website that it would be a nice idea to define a meaning for the verb ‘to ture‘.
Interview: Alan Turing Cryptography competition
The University of Manchester is holding another cryptography competition (as featured in this news post earlier this week). We spoke to Charles Walkden, one of the competition’s organisers, about the project.
Registration for the Alan Turing Cryptography Competition 2013 is open
Following on from the huge success that was their inaugural competition earlier this year, mathematicians from the University of Manchester have put together another Cryptography Competition in honour of father of modern everything, Alan Turing.
This time, the competition is open to teams of school children from all over the UK, and comprises a six-chapter story featuring Alice and Bob Mike and Ellie, who get “caught up in a cryptographic adventure”. Solving all the puzzles and cracking the codes faster than other people gets you on the leader board, and there are prizes for being near the top as well as extra prizes for randomly-selected teams who’ve solved everything. (You know that since it’s a maths department, their randomisation algorithms will be top-notch). It’s also possible to enter as a non-schoolchild, and check your answers on the site, although you won’t be eligible for prizes. The competition is aimed at UK school years 7-11 (age 11-16), although I can confirm it’s dead good fun for anyone interested in cryptography puzzles themed around exciting storylines.
More information
Alan Turing Cryptography Competition 2013
Manchester University press release
Via Nick Higham on Twitter.