Having been absent for last month’s MathsJam, I was keen to have a great time this month so I prepared some nice Easter-based things (since this is the nearest MathsJam to Easter). I thought about egg-shapes, and how to construct them, and came up with a few fun things. The turnout was huge (at its peak, 21+ε: one attendee was expecting) and we spread out over three tables.
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Newcastle MathsJam January & February 2013 recaps
I’ve finally finally got round to writing up my notes from the last two Newcastle MathsJams, over at my mathem-o-blog.
MathsJam expands yet again
Gradually, gradually, the mathematicians are taking over the world. Having already conquered (by which I mean ‘colonised pubs once a month’) in places as far-flung as Melbourne, Houston, Bombay and Edinburgh, MathsJam will be making its debut in Cape Town, South Africa on Tuesday February 19th.
Videos from MathsJam 2012
While we were at the big MathsJam conference a few weekends ago, we took the opportunity to point a camera in people’s faces and ask them to tell us something interesting. Because of the high quality of MathsJam attendees, this went better than it would in most other contexts.
Here’s a collection of clips we recorded while people were digesting both their dinners and the first day’s talks.
[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg_IeC1M5D4]
Radii of polyhedra
(At last month’s big MathsJam conference, we asked a few people who gave particularly interesting talks if they’d like to write something for the site. A surprising number said yes. First to arrive in the submissions pile was this piece by Tom Button.)
The formula for the surface area of a sphere, $A=4\pi r^{2}$, is the derivative of the formula for the volume of a sphere: $V=\frac{4}{3}\pi r^{3}$.
This result does not hold for a cube with side length $a$ if the surface area and volume are written in terms of $a$. However, if the surface area and volume are written in terms of half the side length, $r=\frac{a}{2}$, you get the surface area $A=24 r^{2}$, which is the derivative of the volume, $V=8 r^{3}$.
What I did on my holidays, by Colin (aged 35 and a bit)
We’re all back from the big MathsJam weekend. We’ve got loads of material which we’ll start putting up once we’ve recovered our energies. Meanwhile, Colin Beveridge has sent in his report of the event.
Last weekend – as I’m sure all Aperiodical readers know – was the MathsJam annual gathering in Cheshire.
Now, I’ve always hated conferences. Loathed the bloody things. I resented travelling to them, resented preparing talks, resented the uncomfortable beds, the politics, the enforced niceness. I resented the nod-along-and-pretend-you-understand, the gabble-away-with-your-head-down-so-you-can-say-you-gave-a-talk, the questions-for-the-sake-of-advancing-pet-theories, the sessions that lasted weeks. I resented the trying-to-find-veggie-food-in-New-Orleans, the being-expected-to-show-up-for-everything, the having-to-keep-receipts, all of it.
I could have just stayed at my desk and played Tetris. But MathsJam is different.
We’re all off to MathsJam!
This organ’s benevolent editing triumvirate is making its way to a conference centre outside Crewe this weekend for our AGM, which happens to coincide this year with the big MathsJam conference. If you’re going as well, please do say hello, and if you’re not, keep an eye on each of our Twitter feed @aperiodical and the #MathsJam hashtag. We’re going to be trying to tweet along with most of what’s happening, as will most of the other 100 attendees, and we’re going to have some good posts lined up for the coming weeks based on what we see there.