This is a rather belated review of Simon Singh’s talk on The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets given for the Leeds Skeptics in the Pub in the Victoria Hotel pub. (There’s a chance to win the book, details below.) The Victoria is not a large pub so I did wonder where the...

In this post I interview Richard Elwes, author of a number of maths books in recent years. He has kindly agreed to give away signed copies his two most recent, Mathematics in 100 Key Breakthroughs and Chaotic Fishponds and Mirror Universes. For a chance to win all you have to do is sign up...

The week has been so busy that posting this has been delayed – I’ve been to London, Birmingham and Sheffield in the last three days. I did manage to install for a newsletter sign-up form for the blog. You can see it in the sidebar unless my hacks to the code have destroyed it for...

The ruler has remained unchanged for thousands of years. Now it has been updated! You can read more (but not much) at Anirudh Sharma’s website, Creative Applications, Gizmag, and...

First a plug for the next Maths Jam in Leeds: It will be on Tuesday 23rd at 7pm in the White Swan (it’s pretty much next to the City Varieties). I’ll be there (I know that if don’t publicly commit to it, then I’ll miss it) so maybe I’ll see you there!...

This is a strange one: How to make edible conic sections! You can find the details at Evil Mad Scientist. If you enjoy maths-related cooking, then see my post on Tau-nados. Does anyone else have any other...

The usual busyness at the end of the teaching term and a holiday last week have meant that I’ve not been posting for a while. Today’s post is a short one from me directing you to a fairly long post by Stephen Wolfram on his recent visit to the Leibniz archive in Hannover. Read it...

I never miss a chance to rummage around in second-hand book shops. In the past bargains were easy to come by but now the internet has killed that off. Now all books are priced pretty much the same and I no longer have the experience of approaching the counter carrying a much-underpriced book...

Recently, an acquaintance from my days as a researcher at Liverpool University alerted me to the existence of the Museum of Mathematics in New York. My acquaintance, Janet West, was a PhD student when I was at Liverpool and is now involved in the museum. There’s plenty of stuff online...

Mary Cartwright is fairly well-known amongst mathematicians in the UK but less widely known amongst the general public. A recent BBC online article about her and her work may be the beginning of a change in this situation. There is even a Radio 4...

Here’s a really good introduction to estimating numbers and includes Enrico Fermi‘s famous “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?” You can see more like this at...

This is mainly one for those local to Leeds (although see the bottom of the post). As part of the Leeds Festival of Science, Matt Parker will be giving a talk at the University. From the advertising: Direct from BBC Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox and Robin Ince, with research...

I’m not a big user of twitter as I prefer to read material that has more than 140 characters. Nonetheless, often something interesting appears. Dan Meyer set off an intriguing set of responses to his call for maths problems that can be posed within Twitter constraints. The results can...

Rock music fans are aware of the phenomenon of the mosh pit at concerts — a riotous area, usually close to the stage, where concert-goers, in lieu of learning complicated dance steps, slam violently into each other (and hence an alternative name for moshing is slam dancing). Until now...

3D printing seems to have some sort of turning point in the last few months. Lots of people know what it is and many are experimenting with it. This week I began teaching on my History of Mathematics module; yesterday’s lecture was about Archimedes. I would never imagined that the two...

Obviously the first post of the year should be a serious one about the year ahead, New Year’s resolutions and such. Not this time. This time I urge you to have a look at the mathematics of Lego via Wired. Read the article here. To be honest I’m not sure if this really is a good...

It’s the end of the year. It seems only like yesterday we were all saying “What? I can’t believe it’s the end of January already”. So what was the year like? I feel I’ve had a good year – I’ve been having a lot of fun trying to understand...

Nate Silver has come to prominence recently through the seemingly simple method of predicting election results through statistics. I’ve just finished reading his book, The Signal and the Noise and it’s certainly one of my favourite books of the year. It covers all sorts of...

I follow a number of education writers and those who write about learning. One of these, Scott Young, is a high achieving recent graduate who seems to be making a living by giving learning advice. His latest claim to fame is his MIT Challenge where he studied a complete 4-year MIT course in...

No post last week – I seem to have spent the last two weeks on trains or motorways going from one part of the country to the next on various academic related missions so have not had the time to write a post. So back to business. Dara O’Briain’s Science Club is a new TV...

Too much going on this week to post anything sensible so I’ll point in the direction of the latest xkcd:

On Monday night I unexpectedly came across a TV programme about the code-crackers at Bletchley Park during World War II. Usually such a programme focuses on Turing and the cracking of Enigma but this was about two of the lesser known players: William Tutte who was a mathematician like Turing...

Today’s TED video is an augmented reality card trick by Marco Tempest. Now, I’m a fan of card tricks but this was a bit too cutesy for me. However, I draw your attention to his computer’s claim (at 3:20) that if you add up all the spots on the cards in a deck then you get...

This one is slightly outside my maths remit but I felt that Robin Ince made some serious points (and maybe some not so serious points) about science communication on this Saturday’s Saturday Live on Radio 4. You can hear it here for the next few days provided you can use the BBC’s...

I’m back in Liverpool. Rob Sturman and I were reprising the British Science Festival talk for the Liverpool Mathematics Society and today I’m giving a research talk at the University. I had hoped to write about all this last night when I was in my hotel, the famous Adelphi Hotel,...