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# Posts

### December 21, 2014

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Exactly three years ago, on 22nd of December 2011 the then PM of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh announced in a major event at the University of Madras that 22nd of December would be celebrated as National Mathematics Day in India and 2012 as National Mathematics Year. This announcement came on the 125th birth year of
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"A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas." Shane Shambhu as Ramanujan and David Annan as Hardy in the play A disappearing number. Photo: Tristram Kenton.read more
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We are pleased to upload the Mathematical Sciences question papers for SET 2014, conducted by SLET Commission, Assam.   Paper I Paper II Paper III   [The member state of the Commission are Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Sikkim and Tripura.]
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Quando non ti ricordi cosa c'è dopo l'uno, il tre è molto lontano Fred (d'Alembert) Bene, sembra siate passati attraverso moltiplicazione e divisione senza eccessivi traumi. Ancora un passettino, dai: carta & matita. Calcolate la radice quadrata di duecentosessantaquattro. Sino al secondo decimale. Non ditemi che non vi ricordate... Incredibile! Già, anche in età più tarda ci si scontra con [...]
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Retour sur les triangles de Steinhaus équilibrés et le problème de Molluzzo … - Les conjectures du trimestre / Piste rouge, featured
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The following open letter in support of the autonomy of the universities of the Republic of Macedonia was originally drafted by Todd May for the purposes of being circulated and gaining additional signatories. It is being published here with the names of its current subscribers. Those who wish to add...

### December 20, 2014

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Sun, the brightest object of our solar system, is the primary energy source of our life, in fact for any living organism. Sun is considered to be the central object of our solar system that holds all the planets and their moons together. The day begins with beautiful sunshine and ends with reddish sky at
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This was a week of stem cell retractions, fake peer reviews, legal threats, and we announced that we’ve been awarded a $400,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: Want to be an author on a paper? Just write a check. Is the STAP stem cell mess over? Haruko Obokata was unable […]The post Weekend reads: Authorship for sale, STAP stem cell scandal finally over? appeared first on Retraction Watch. + What is so special about 39,222 Mexican teachers? In the first of three episodes looking back at 2014, Mexico specialist Professor Carlos Vilalta tells Tim Harford. This programme was first broadcast on the BBC World Service. + I have been asked to pass along the following appeal—first circulated privately and signed by representatives of a student organization and several faculty, including noted philosopher Katerina Kolozova—concerning the situation of universities in Macedonia. The Macedonian government is moving to institute a set of external, government administered examinations that would... ### December 19, 2014 + This week in Statshot: Applications to Stanford University have almost doubled over the past eight years; more than 17 million Christmas trees are harvested in the U.S. each year, creating a half-billion-dollar market for distinctly shaped fir trees; and more. + Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887 - 1920).read more + Fake peer reviews: They’re all the rage. Sixteen papers are being retracted across three Elsevier journals after the publisher discovered that one of the authors, Khalid Zaman, orchestrated fake peer reviews by submitting false contact information for his suggested reviewers. This particular kind of scam has been haunting online peer review for a few year now, as loyal Retraction […]The post Elsevier retracting 16 papers for faked peer review appeared first on Retraction Watch. + I'm working on a longer piece that involves Uber and I got to thinking about the big discussion we had about Groupon back in 2011. Many of the arguments currently being used to justify Uber's$40 billion valuation (rapid growth, huge potential market, a foundation of new economic and technological paradigms) were also being used to justify faith in Groupon.I don't want to make too much of the analogy -- they are very different companies with very different business models -- but it is still […]
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Faked peer reviews — a subject about which we’ve been writing more and more recently — are concerning enough to a number of publishers that they’ve approached the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to work together on a solution. In the past, we have reported on a number of cases in which authors were able […]The post Are companies selling fake peer reviews to help papers get published? appeared first on Retraction Watch.
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This is the fourth and for now final installment of my series of posts on conceptual genealogy. Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; Part II.2 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is here. I now discuss the five main...
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Voici trois notes de lectures hautement subjectives. À quelques jours d'intervalle, j'ai fort aimablement reçu trois livres que viennent de publier des personnes que je connais et pour lesquelles j'ai beaucoup d'estime. C'est donc avec plaisir que je souhaite vous parler de leurs ouvrages, que je vous recommande tout en précisant donc que je n'ai aucunement la prétention d'être un lecteur impartial. Le premier est celui de Stella Baruk, Nombres à compter et à raconter (Seuil, 2014), qui […]
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Chaque semaine, un défi du calendrier mathématique 2014... - Défis du Calendrier Mathématique 2014 / Carrousel

### December 18, 2014

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I've got a couple more post I'd like to do on Kružno, the abstract strategy game I developed a few years ago, a post on abstract strategy games and another on trying my hand at small scale manufacturing (and why I ended up using chess pieces in a checkers variant). Unfortunately, I'm a bit pressed for time and I really wanted to get something out today, so this will have to do for now.You can find the rules here and the game itself here. The game takes about three to five minutes to […]
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Daniel Spielman was appointed a Simons Investigator in Theoretical Computer Science as a part of the foundation’s inaugural class in 2012. By combining mathematics with computer science, Spielman is able to make the process of solving mathematical problems faster and more efficient.
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A team of entomologists in India had to put their new species celebration on hold last year, when they found out their discovery had already been discovered. The Journal of Insect Science paper, initially published in December 2012, was retracted in October 2013, after several entomologists confirmed that the beetle was actually a previously identified species called Acanthophorus serraticornis. (The […]The post That new beetle? Actually, it’s really an old beetle appeared […]
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How to write a sum that's infinitely long. [maths] If I tell you to consider the infinite sum $$1+2+3+4+5...$$ you will know what I mean. It's easy to continue the pattern, it's 6 next, then 7, and so on. The same goes for the infinite sum $$1 + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \frac{1}{4} + \frac{1}{5} + ...$$ But what if the pattern is less obvious?read more
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If you're feeling a bit weary in the run up to Christmas (I know we are!) we thought you might like to put your feet up and have a cup of tea instead of whatever it is you are working on. You can relax because every thing you've ever produced or will produce is already encoded in a number known as Champernowne's constant, consisting of every positive whole number listed after the decimal point: 0.1234567891011121314151617…. read more
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Jens Christian Schwamborn, a stem cell researcher at the University of Luxembourg, is retracting a 2007 paper on how to grow brain cells. The paper, “Ubiquitination of the GTPase Rap1B by the ubiquitin ligase Smurf2 is required for the establishment of neuronal polarity,” was published while Schwamborn was at Westfälische Wilhelms‐Universität Münster in Germany. An anonymous […]The post Stem cell researcher retracts neuron paper for “image aberrations” […]
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Luciano Rila What is 1-1+1-1+1-1+...? How infinite sums challenge our notion of arithmetic. Guido Grandi (1671-1742).read more
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...is online! It merges the different lists hitherto available with specific underrepresented groups within philosophy and for different areas into a single directory. From the description: The UPDirectory publicizes information about philosophers who are members of traditionally underrepresented groups in philosophy. The purpose of the directory is to provide an...
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By Catarina Dutilh Novaes This is the third installment of my series of posts with different sections of the paper on conceptual genealogy that I am working on. Part I is here; Part II.1 is here; a tentative abstract of 2 years ago, detailing the motivation for the project, is...
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Les nombreux problèmes qui se posent dans l'enseignement des mathématiques n'indiffèrent personne. Beaucoup de gens en parlent, mais peu les posent de façon concrète. - Le débat du 18...
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Lava Lamp What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? What could I use as a clear medium? How close could I stand to watch it? Kathy Johnstone, 6th Grade Teacher (via a student) This is a surprisingly reasonable idea, by What If standards. I mean, it's not that reasonable. At the very least, I'm guessing you would lose your teaching license, and possibly some of the students in the front row. But you could do it. Just a warning: I'm going to be linking to a lot of videos of […]

### December 17, 2014

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Piero Anversa, a stem cell researcher at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and a colleague, Annarosa Leri, have sued Harvard over an investigation into their work that they claim has cost them millions in a forfeited sale of their company, and job offers. The team has had a paper in Circulation retracted, and a paper in […]The post Stem cell researchers sue Harvard, claiming faulty investigation lost them job offers appeared first on Retraction Watch.