I haven’t posted in a while because I’m on holiday in Brazil. I’m currently at my parents-in-law’s apartment in a place called Barra in Rio de Janeiro. Weather’s been good and I’ve only got sunburn on my right shoulder – my skin type is basically northern European and is not suited to sunshine so minor sunburn is considered a success. The weather is a complete contrast to last Christmas when it was -15 degrees celsius in the UK. Anyhow, I did have a chance to visit Thomas Lewiner, one of the guys who gave us the dancing dinosaur. I was able to ask him many dumb questions about the discrete Laplace-Beltrami operator. Perhaps, I’ll get round to writing up some stuff about it. It’s about time I got a new paper out! Anyway, next scheduled post is New Year’s day. Until then, tchau! PS. If you are waiting for an email reply from me, my apologies. I have nearly 150 messages in my Inbox, so a reply might be delayed while I’m on...

Today the people at CERN announced that they had found evidence that the Higgs boson exists. Mind you, they do also say that more data is needed before they can reach any firm conclusions. So not exactly overwhelming evidence. In other news, Cambridge University has been digitizing their collection of Isaac Newton papers and is putting it online. See http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/. Having had a quick, almost cursory, look through, I think that most of us are going to have to wait for an expert to produce a handy guide and some translation. Any volunteers? It’s amazing to think that in those papers and notebooks Newton wrote down ideas that revolutionized science and had a huge impact in the world. Compare it to today’s news from CERN. There are hundreds of scientists working there and even if their combined effort does find the Higgs boson (and it’s not looking 100% certain), it won’t have the same impact as Newton’s discoveries. That’s a bit of a sobering...

I was rather shocked with the Daily Telegraph story about A-Level/GCSE exam board examiners running seminars – charging up to 230 pounds – where secrets of the exam papers, such as the cycling of exam questions, are revealed. Shocked that people are handing over 230 pounds to be told the obvious. The full story and video evidence is here. I think that the Telegraph is focussing on the wrong story somewhat. The problem is not whether rules were broken or guidance was not followed but with quality of the exam papers. Basically, even I can tell you what will be on the mathematics A-Level exam paper. (Please send 230 pound if you want me to tell you.) The exam papers are just too predictable. The key to understanding this state of affairs is actually given in the article but not covered in depth: The investigation has exposed a system in which exam boards aggressively compete with one another to win “business” from schools. Evidence that standards of exams have been deliberately driven down to encourage schools to sign up for them has also been uncovered. Unfortunately that evidence doesn’t appear in the article. Nonetheless it is worth reading; it adds more to the case for...