My Isle of Man trip

Last week I went to the Isle of Man to give a couple of talks. The sixth forms on the island have an annual maths symposium where the students get together in a school, listen to a speaker and then spend the day doing maths activities. By tradition the speaker also gives a talk to the island’s mathematics society and I had some hard acts to follow since previous speakers have included Christopher Zeeman, Chris Budd and Colin Wright. So on Thursday morning I had to rise particularly early to get to Manchester airport and fly to Ronaldsway airport on the south of the island. I was met by Heather Bellinger, who had initially invited to give the talks, and her husband. They then showed me some of the sights on the island, including seals in the south. The evening talk was to the mathematical society and I chose to try out my new talk on Autotune. This is a piece of software that corrects a singer’s pitch and it is safe to say it has had a massive impact on the music industry. I’ll explain in a different post about how it works. However, I can tell you the talk features not only some interesting maths but The X Factor, The Beatles, SingStar, Pinky and Perky and the original Doctor Who theme. If you are a school teacher or run a mathematical event, then get in touch if you want to hear this talk! The next day I was at Ramsay Grammar for the symposium and did my Card Cheating/Maths and Magic talk. Some initial technical problems meant that I set up in a hurry, didn’t feel prepared and so messed up the start, though I suspect no one noticed. Also, I had...

New book – Variational Problems in Differential Geometry Oct24

New book – Variational Problems in Differential Geometry...

Along with my colleagues Roger Bielawski and Martin Speight, I have edited the proceedings of the Workshop on Variational Problems in Differential Geometry which we held here at Leeds in 2009. The book has just been published by Cambridge University Press in the prestigious London Mathematical Society Lecture Notes Series. It’s intended for researchers working in differential geometry and can be bought from the publishers or via Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. Needless to say, it’s a must-have if you work in the area. And if you work in a university, then don’t forget to recommend it to your library!...

Dancing dinosaurs and kool kats...

Only one post this week as I’m off to the Isle of Man tomorrow to give two maths popularization talks – the evergreen favourite on mathematics and card cheating and my new talk on Auto-Tune. Anyhow, recently I’ve been looking into harmonics, graphics, etc and came across an interesting research paper: http://zeus.mat.puc-rio.br/tomlew/pdfs/stereomh_tvc.pdf . There’s a video to go with it that you can see below. The idea is that you can take a 3D object and encode its shape in a way similar to that in which a sound can be encoded using the fundamental frequency and harmonics. By changing the “harmonics” for the 3D object you can get a new shape. Now what if you linked the harmonics in the shape to the harmonics in a tune? The shape will change in time to the music. And that’s what you can see in the video. Of course, why are these guys wasting time on writing papers when they could be writing a best-selling app for the...

How to get a good degree: Go to Bed (and get up…)...

Judging by site stats my posts on getting a good degree are quite popular, so since this is the start of the academic year I’ll talk about one of the most important elements of getting a good degree. And this is an important one: Go to bed. Now, I know the student life is supposed to involve staying up late and partying and I have nothing against that in moderation. But if you want a good degree, then go to bed. Sleep is vital for humans. No-one knows why we do it. It seems strange and wasteful to spend about a third of our lives asleep when obviously we could be out enjoying life. What is known is that lack of sleep leads to poor health and poor concentration. And concentration is vital to getting a good degree. Hence, don’t stay up mindlessly watching TV (how many repeats of Friends or Two and Half Men do you need to see?), surfing the internet (the internet will still be there tomorrow and most of it’s rubbish) or texting friends (are your texts of an Oscar Wilde standard of repartee? No? Then cut out the late night lols and omgs). How to get up in the morning Of course, a bigger problem is getting out of bed in the morning. Students are stereotypically famous for not getting up. Current popular research suggests this is due to the hormones of young people and we shouldn’t try to fight it; the school day should start later. However, if you have a large number of those unpopular 9am lectures, then here are some simple tips on getting up: Take it easy: Try 15 minutes earlier for a few days. Next try an extra 15 minutes earlier and so on...

More on academic journals Oct11

More on academic journals...

Why can’t I remember to hit the publish button? This should have appeared yesterday! An interesting piece in the Times Higher: Peers, review your actions by Michael Taylor with plenty of good comments after the article. (Has that last phrase ever been used about comments on the internet?) For me the most interesting bit is the suggestion that researchers should ask for payment for their services – currently we referee and edit pretty much for free. I have seen before that we should charge fees – either by Halmos or Steven Krantz, but I can’t remember where. I think I’ll adopt the idea. If anyone asks me to review for an academic journal that is not open access or for a learned society such as the London Mathematical Society, then I’ll ask for payment. Does anyone know of a reasonable rate? Not that it matters, even if I set my fee at one pound per hour, then I think the journal editor will look elsewhere for a referee. I’ll start at 100 pounds for a standard paper and 140 for a long paper. Too much or am I undervaluing my time/talents? I’ll let you know if I get any...