The Aperiodical 

You're reading: Posts Tagged: maths in the media

Laws of mathematics not as immutable as we thought, in Australia

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted July 16, 2017

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull said, as part of a speech proposing a law to force tech companies to give the government access to encrypted messages,

“The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”

The problem is that the end-to-end encryption schemes used by messaging apps make it practically impossible for the makers of the app to read messages, even if they really want to.

New Scientist writer Jacob Aron has seen the positive side of Turnbull’s comments:

Mathematicians, rejoice! In the land down under, your undecidable problems melt away! Fight the Gödelian oppressors and move to Australia! https://t.co/Sc96tbvyeX

— Jacob Aron (@jjaron) July 14, 2017

Review: Hidden Figures

By Katie Steckles. Posted March 8, 2017

Mega-late to the party, I’ve now arrived back from a week lecturing in Indonesia and have found time to go and see the incredibly well-received and widely talked-about NASA women maths film, Hidden Figures. I’ve heard an incredible number of wildly positive responses to the film, from as long ago as January, and have been looking forward to it greatly.

The film is a painstaking and at times brutally realistic depiction of the struggles faced by African-Americans, and by women, during the era of the early space missions.

“I own more maths books by Martin Gardner than by women, is that bad?”

By Christian Lawson-Perfect, Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. Posted March 8, 2017

Today is International Women’s Day, so we’ve taken a moment to think about the woman mathematicians in our lives.

We each have fairly sizeable collections of maths books, which prompted CLP to wonder how many of them are by female authors. A quick scan of our respective bookshelves later, here’s what we found.

Maths and stats on Radio 1!

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted May 26, 2016



(For once I can use an exclamation mark next to a number without wise alecks making the canonical joke)

Maths and stats! On BBC Radio 1! Who’d’ve though it!

DJ Clara Amfo and the ubiquitous Hannah Fry have got a new series on the UK’s top pop station, looking at music from a mathematical perspective.

Music by Numbers (excuse me, Music by Num83r5), is currently being broadcast at 9pm each Tuesday, and there are a couple of episodes already on iPlayer Radio to catch up on. The first is about Coldplay (records sold: millions; distinct tunes composed: 1) and the second looks at a few numbers to do with Iggy Azalea’s career.

It’s mostly a very easy listen, more a biography hung off a list of numbers than any real maths, but that might be your cup of tea. And Dr Fry’s segments do go into a little bit of depth about subjects like how the top 40 chart is calculated.

I’ll warn you now that each episode is an hour long, with a lot of music breaks. If you’re like me, your tolerance for some of the featured artists might not be sufficient to get through a whole episode in one go.

Listen: Music by Numbers on BBC Radio 1.

Riemann Hypothesis not proved, part 2

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted November 19, 2015



Who could have guessed that this non-story about somebody being out of his depth and quite obviously wrong would get so out of hand? Here’s an update on The Continuing Tale Of The Man Whose Claims Couldn’t Be Verified.

Cheng vs Colbert

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted November 13, 2015

Eugenia Cheng was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert recently. Here it is:

Given any Delta, there exists Epsilon

By Card Colm. Posted August 11, 2015



At the end of an overnight flight from San Francisco to New York is hardly the ideal time to play “I Spy Mathematics” on a packed airplane. We were all grumpy and groggy from four scant hours of sleep. It seemed that nobody had watched any films en route and, like most of the other passengers, I didn’t have headphones or earplugs to hand.

Clearly there was no point in scanning the entertainment offerings with just 15 minutes to landing. But then I remembered spotting an ad on screen for The Great Courses as I’d settled into my seat in San Francisco. Was it possible that I’d blown a chance to watch Art Benjamin, David Bressoud, Judith Grabiner, David Kung, James Sellers or Mike Starbird in action? I decided to try to find out.