Kevin Houston

I’ve been busy this week. On Monday I gave my new Auto-Tune talk to the School of Maths (I spent the previous Saturday reading the patent for Auto-Tune. Very interesting.) And yesterday I was in London to give a talk on Teaching Analysis. The meeting was also interesting but poorly attended as just about every project is running conferences and workshops. During my talk I showed my Pi is 4 video as an example of something I am using in my lectures. You can see it here.

Anyhow, Vi Hart has a video on the subject which is worth watching:

Cover of College Mathematics Journal

The issue is, as one might expect, a mixed bag. Of interest is a reprint of Gardener’s original article on Hexaflexagons (these were a childhood favourite for me); in the provocatively titled Martin Gardner’s Mistake Tanya Khovanova discusses the errors in solutions to Tuesday’s child problem (a problem which surfaced at Gathering for Gardner before ricocheting around the internet); Arthur Benjamin has a very simple (I mean that in a good way) article on Squaring, Cubing, and Cube Rooting. There’s also an article by Ian Stewart, who (I suppose it goes without saying) has a new book out.

Have you seen Maths Busking? I reported my experience of being a maths busker last year.
Well, the concept has been entered for a pubic engagement award and, should you wish, you can vote for it here:
http://www.engageawards.org/entry/18

Back from a long weekend holiday and, after spam removed, only 115 new emails to deal with!

Here’s something I saw recently, which admittedly was quickly corrected. Still, it made me laugh.

Tau vs pi (taken from MIT admissions)

As someone associated with the Tauists (a Times editorial described me as a leader of a maverick band of mathematicians promoting tau) I shouldn’t be celebrating Pi Day today. But Tauists and Piists can live in peace as the following link shows (and from which the above picture is taken):

http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/i-have-smashing-news

Now, if you’ll excuse me I need to rush off to give a talk about card cheating in a local school and then go to Durham for a Yorkshire Durham Geometry Day celebrating the life of Tom Willmore.