Watch geometer/topologist Caleb Ashley explain the parallel postulate on Numberphile.
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Carnival of Mathematics 145
Welcome to the 145th Carnival of Mathematics, hosted here at The Aperiodical.
If you’re not familiar with the Carnival of Mathematics, it’s a monthly blog post, hosted on some kind volunteer’s maths blog, rounding up their favourite mathematical blog posts (and submissions they’ve received through our form) from the past month, ish. If you think you’d like to host one on your blog, simply drop an email to katie@aperiodical.com and we can find an upcoming month you can do. On to the Carnival!
New Mersenne prime discovered, and promptly printed out
Breaking news! On 19th January 2016, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search discovered a new largest prime number – we know 49 Mersenne primes, the largest of which is now $2^{74207281}-1$, a number containing over 22 million digits and full of primey goodness.
Internet Maths Person Matt Parker has responded to the news in spectacular style, by issuing a 14-minute long video explaining the discovery and its implications, as well as somehow scoring an interview with the actual discoverer of the new prime, Curtis Cooper.
How I Wish I Could Celebrate Pi
People with an interest in date coincidences are probably already getting themselves slightly over-excited about the fact that this month will include what can only be described as Ultimate π Day. That is, on 14th March 2015, written under certain circumstances by some people as 3/14/15, we’ll be celebrating the closest that the date can conceivably get to the exact value of π (in that format).
Of course, sensible people would take this as an excuse to have a party, so here’s my top $\tau$ recommendations for having a π party on π day.
Domputer: the movie
If anyone remembers October 2012 (ahh, those were the days) you might recall we wrote about Aperiodipal Matt Parker, and his crazy project to build a computer out of dominoes. Well, it happened, but not much has happened since – sorting out a video of the event has taken a while. But it’s ready now! And it’s great!
3.142: a π round-up
π pie by Robert Couse-Baker. Photo used under the CC-BY 2.0 licence.
‘Tis the season to celebrate the circle constant! ((Pedants would have me revise that to “a circle constant”.)) Yes, that’s right: in some calendar systems using some date notation, the day and month coincide with the first three digits of π, and mathematicians all over the world are celebrating with thematic baked goods and the wearing of irrational t-shirts.
And the internet’s maths cohort isn’t far behind. Here’s a round-up (geddit – round?!) of some of our favourites. In case you were wondering, we at The Aperiodical hadn’t forgotten about π day – we’re just saving ourselves for next year, when we’ll celebrate the magnificent “3.14.15”, which will for once be more accurate to the value of π than π approximation day on 22/7. (Admittedly, for the last few years, 3.14.14 and so on have strictly been closer to π than 22/7. But this will be the first time you can include the year and feel like you’re doing it right.)
John Conway on Numberphile!
Numberphile, the supremum over all YouTube channels, has scored a bit of a coup – Brady has sat down and recorded an interview with the famously Internet-reclusive John Conway.
In this first video (there’s a bonus one linked at the end of this one, and I hope there’ll be more) John talks about his love/hate relationship with his Game of Life.
[youtube url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA]
By the way, I notice from the video’s description that the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute is paying for Numberphile these days. Thanks, MSRI!