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Happy 200th Birthday, Ada Lovelace!

ada lovelace birthday

Today marks computing and maths pioneer Ada Lovelace’s 200th birthday. In celebration we’ve rounded up a few Ada-based links from around the internet.

Ada Lovelace was a 19th-century mathematician and early computer scientist, during an era when it was uncommon for women to do such things, and worked alongside Charles Babbage. His incredible Analytical Engine, an early mechanical calculator, was studied by Ada and her most enduring work is an article she wrote about the engine and its mathematical potential.

Results of Gowers’ mathematical writing experiment

Timothy Gowers’ mathematical writing experiment, which we reported on last month, has now concluded and the results are available. The experiment concerned a set of proofs of results on metric spaces; Gowers sought opinions on how well-written and understandable each one is.

It turns out that experiment was a ruse!: Gowers revealed on his blog that he has been working on a program which can produce human-readable proofs of propositions, and its proofs were smuggled in amongst two others written by humans. After revealing that, he asked for people to tell him which proofs were the computer’s. He’s just published the results of that second experiment on his blog, along with a description of the program.

Manchester Science Festival Blog – Matt Parker’s Domino Computer

Matt Parker, smug domino userIn case you weren’t already excited enough about Matt Parker’s Domino Computer (see: Math/Maths Episode 112, and articles on this website), the Manchester Science Festival blog has posted an official press release about the event, including photos of the domino assembly team lying around on the floor (none of us are professional models, but we did our best for the camera), and quotes from Matt about how important domino computers are.

Top marks go to sometime Aperiodical author Paul, for looking super-bored in the group photo. I’m sure he was thinking about hard maths.

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