X

# Posts

### October 31, 2014

+
twocubes: anewkindofmagic: twocubes: aeneida: twocubes: cute! I want to prove this but I don’t know where to start hint: I got in quite a mess of algebra when I did this. Curse the sum of squares formula and all its works. Alternate way I found: consider the pairs of squares on both sides , starting with the largest. Take the smaller from the bigger, and add these differences. We want to prove that this is equal to the square of n(2n+1). For instance, (14^2-12^2)+(13^2-11^2)=10^2. […]
+
The UKEdchat Mathematics Subject Special took place on Thursday 23rd October and the Session page has been updated with the complete chat.  Note that you do not need a Twitter account to view any of the links mentioned in the … Continue reading →
+
*The image is a pumpkin carved a few Halloweens ago by Sonja L. One of my Stats/Calc students (and a really good Bassoonist, Bassooner, Bassoon-enough)It is true that a mathematician who is not somewhat of a poet, will never be a perfect mathematician. ~Karl WeierstrassThe 304th day of the year; 304 is the sum of six consecutive primes starting with 41, and also the sum of eight consecutive primes starting with 23. (and for those who keep up with such things, it is also the record number of […]

### October 30, 2014

+
The first half term of the school year has seen us embark on a newer emphasis on 'progress over time' and a need for students' exercise books to be glistening with not only marked work, but 'learning dialogues/conversations' including students' responses to our WWW/EBI comments. This, is also (as I found out in an observation the last week of the half term), coupled with students needing to show knowledge of their previous learning when quizzed during the lesson observation by my observers: if […]
+
Come join us November 1st and hone your skills for this year’s problem solving season.  AMC 8 is this month, making it a great time to delve into various interesting problems.  Combinatorics, Number Theory, Geometry, and Algebra problems will be presented with multiple difficulty levels to challenge and delight our math circle patrons.  Whether you […]
+
Why the Chess Computer Deep Blue Played Like a Human: David Auerbach: The usual way a computer plays chess is to consider various move possibilities individually, evaluate the resulting boards, and rank moves as being more or less advantageous. Yet for games like Go and Twixt, this approach breaks down. Whereas at any point in chess there are at most a couple dozen possible moves, these games offer hundreds of possible moves (thousands in the case of Arimaa, which was designed to be a […]
+
Jason Holloway just sent me the following noteHi Igor,We are announcing the call for papers for ICCP 2015. Can you help disseminate the CFP to your readers? (Or link to our Google+/Facebook page?)Thanks!~Jason (on behalf of the program committee for ICCP 2015)IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography ( ICCP 2015 -- http://iccp.rice.edu/ ) seeks high quality submissions in all areas related to computational photography.  The field of Computational Photography […]
+
A referee of our paper on approximating evidence for mixture model with Jeong Eun Lee pointed out the recent paper by Carlos Rodríguez and Stephen Walker on label switching in Bayesian mixture models: deterministic relabelling strategies. Which appeared this year in JCGS and went beyond, below or above my radar. Label switching is an issue […]
+
I’ve just finished watching ITV Tonight’s episode from this evening entitled “Trouble with numbers”. The show was highlighting the problem we have in this country with maths ability in Adults. I found it pretty interesting, and if you missed it I would certainly suggest catching up on it. There were a number of things highlighted […]
+
This post gives a […]
+
Anche se non è una ricorrenza italiana, Halloween può diventare un'utile occasione per imparare qualcosa di nuovo a scuola ed acquisire un po' di manualità. Abbiamo visto, qualche anno fa, le opere d'arte matematiche realizzate con le zucche dagli studenti del dipartimento di Matematica della Denison University a Granville, in Ohio, utili per realizzare divertenti attività interdisciplinari tra matematica ed arte, ma quest'anno voglio proporvi qualcosa che abbia più attinenza con le […]
+
"Ένας μαθηματικός,που δεν είναι λίγο […]
+
Below is an […]
+
I work in a school that has a 1-5 grading scale yet many practices are aligned with a percentage / grade letter model. We’re working towards a more common understanding that may eventually shift descriptors but in meantime I find … Continue reading →
+
I thought that because Halloween is tomorrow (for me) a post about some Halloween related mathematics will be fun. 1. Carving Pumpkins. This is one of the traditions for Halloween that I enjoy the most. I was never used to Halloween … Continue reading →
+
Alex Yar asked Speaking of spectra: I learned them (and related things - e.g Brown’s representability etc) from an informal student seminar, so my understanding, I feel, lacks depth and structure. What would be a good textbook-type reference? You might try the book by Elmendorf, Kriz, Mandell, and May, “Rings, Modules, and Algebras in Stable Homotopy Theory”. I’m afraid I don’t know a good textbook-type reference for spectra-as-such. The Homotopy Theory of […]
+
+
A recent Science Quiz was held at Tezpur University, Assam on 23/10/2014 during the Mole Day celebrations 2014. The questions were contributed by Salik Miskat Borbora and Manjil P. Saikia of Gonit Sora. Some of the questions from the quiz can be found  here.
+
Another post from Tap Into Teen Minds. Enjoy! How many elastics will it take to make a pumpkin explode? Take a look at this 3 act math task to make your predictions and participate in the experiment! The post Pumpkin Time-Bomb appeared first on Tap Into Teen Minds.
+
While I do not speak japasese, I’ve noticed a conversation somewhere, from which it appears that : (a) Go Yamashita has a paper in preparation titled ‘A proof of abc conjecture after Mochizuki’, and he also is in the middle of a string of lectures on that topic : 18 hours of talks at RIMS […]
+
A few days ago, I was grading a Calculus quiz and came across the following statement: “the function is discontinuous at x=3 because there is an asmatope (sic)”. I thought it was hilarious, and I still marked it as correct. … Continue reading →
+
Claude (Haim) Schochet is spending this semester at the Technion, and he kindly agreed to give a series of lectures on K-theory. This mini-course is called “Topological K-theory of C*-algebras for the Working Mathematician”. There will be seven lectures (they take place in Amado 814, Mondays 11:00-12:30): A crash course in C*-algebras. K-theory by axioms and core examples. K-theory […]
+
Typing Halloween in this blog's SEARCH BOX will lead you to mathy Halloween poems posted herein, and this Poetry Foundation link will lead to a host of other seasonal poems.
+
Finishing up discussions with scatterplots – today’s visual when students entered presented a new idea in scatterplots (from the awesome Plot.ly site) – a scatterplot representing the score of every NFL game ever played! What’s the story here? So many … Continue reading →
+
A few weeks ago Tracy Johnston Zager asked about this problem on twitter (and these embedded tweets should be amusing during Halloween week!): Her post actually played a role in two blog entries so far: and Today’s post was inspired … Continue reading →
+
Another PhD student in the department (she works on quadratic forms) asked me something about surface singularities, and while explaining some of its interesting aspects (McKay correspondence, Hironaka’s resolution of singularities, intersection graphs, …) I came to realise that there is something important missing from my knowledge on rational surface singularities. Sure, you can say […]
+
I’m staring at this space view of the walking machine described first in this post: The picture is a screenshot of the chemlambda gui available for download from this page. The .mol file of the walker is available at this link. What is this: is a walker as described in the ouroboros predecessor post, which […]
+
A dentistry journal has retracted a paper after discovering the research was lifted from dissertation work by two people unrelated to the paper authors. Here’s the notice for “Treatment of mandibular angle fracture with a 2 mm, 3-dimensional rectangular grid compression miniplates: A prospective clinical study“: It has been brought to the notice of Editorial […]
+
Damaging maths mindset holding pupils back - Telegraph: Josie Gurney-Read: One of the biggest challenges in overcoming low-numeracy levels in the UK is addressing the fact that it is still socially acceptable to say ‘I’m no good at maths’. [source: mme rss]
+
I have always known that I kind of like scheduling things. I will be department chair relatively soon, and I am looking forward to making making the teaching schedules for people. When I was a kid, I would schedule fake professional basketball and baseball seasons for fun. This is a sort of macro-scheduling, and I […]