It’s been a busy few months! As per our name, here’s an aperiodically-timed round up of things that have happened in the world of maths in the last few months.
You're reading: Posts Tagged: Vicky Neale
Review: Why Study Mathematics, by Vicky Neale
In fact, St Andrews offered a French for Scientists course, so I ended up doing Maths with French. A win all round.
I can pinpoint the exact moment it became clear I would study maths at university. Parents’ evening, year 12, I mentioned to my French teacher that I was thinking about a French degree. He looked at me as if I was stupid and said something like “you’re good at French, but you’re GOOD at maths. Besides, a French degree isn’t much use.” Alright, fine. Maths it is. He was spot-on. I never looked back.
Aperiodical News Round-up – September 2020
Here’s a round-up of some mathematical news stories from this month.
IWD 2020: Books about Maths by Women
For International Women’s Day, mathematician Lucy Rycroft-Smith has read a selection of maths books by women authors, and recommended some favourites.
There’s a strange irony about being a woman in mathematics. You spend a huge amount of time and energy answering questions about being a woman in mathematics instead of, you know, using that time and energy to do or write about actual maths. We women are somehow both the problem and the solution.
But behold: 2020 is here, and better and braver women than I have solved this conundrum. Here are a whole host of excellent books about maths by women that you should definitely read, collected for you by another woman in maths.
The Big Internet Math-Off 2019, Group 3 – Vicky Neale vs Jim Propp
This is the third match in round 1: from Group 3, it’s Vicky Neale, vs Jim Propp. The pitches are below, and at the end of this post there’s a poll where you can vote for your favourite bit of maths.
Take a look at both pitches, vote for the bit of maths that made you do the loudest “Aha!”, and if you know any more cool facts about either of the topics presented here, please write a comment below!
Christmas images using parabolic curves and TikZ
Katie is running an Aperiodical advent calendar (Aperiodvent 2018), with fun maths Christmas treats every day. Behind the door for 7th December was Parabolic Sewing.
This is not unrelated to what I submitted as my entry to The Big Internet Math-Off last summer. I have been revisiting this idea ready for a class next week in my second year programming module.
Review: Closing the Gap, by Vicky Neale
Did you read Cédric Villani’s Birth of a Theorem? Did you have the same reaction as me, that all of the mentions of the technical details were incredibly impressive, doubtless meaningful to those in the know, but ultimately unenlightening?
Writing about maths, especially deep technical maths, so that a reader can follow along with it is hard – the Venn diagram of the set of people who can write clearly and the set of people who understand the maths, two relatively small sets, has a yet smaller intersection.