What has happened to the podcast?

So, five months into 2010 what have we learned? I am bad at updating the blog this year as well. I'm sorry blog, Twitter is just so much easier!

Here is a post I've been meaning to write for a while. The Travels in a Mathematical World podcast is on hiatus and I wanted to explain this, since I didn't get chance to in the last recording.

I intended to get to 60 episodes by Easter, then stop until the autumn, to more or less follow the university teaching periods. The podcast, you may remember, is linked to my work for the IMA, where I am involved in engagement with university students. However, there's a complicated process for getting the podcast online and a key person was unwell for a few weeks so we only got as far as 57.

I have a few more recordings to be edited and hope to release them in the autumn semester. Ultimately the podcast is supposed to give students an idea of their career options and I think there are a good number and range of episodes to do that. I am now operating a reduced programme of activity for the IMA, having taken back some time to work on my PhD, so the opportunity for recording new episodes will be reduced. So I have a feeling the podcast might max out around 70. We'll see.

The other podcast I have been releasing is the very occasional History of Maths and x. I have so far recorded two of these linked to articles for iSquared magazine. I have written a third article for iSquared, on probability, which will be in issue 12. This means I am due to give and record a talk. However, the students are currently doing their exams and then will be gone for the summer, so I won't give a traditional lecture. But yesterday I played with a new tablet PC I've got at Nottingham as part of a project I am involved with. I need to try this out, so I might look into doing some kind of recording with this. But this won't be anytime soon as I have a sore throat!

Issue 12 will be the final issue of iSquared, so I will not be asked to write further articles. Does this mean History of Maths and x is finished? I hope not. I feel like I've told part of several stories and there is a lot more to tell. But I have to prioritise the activities I do that enable me to pay the mortgage, and those I pay to do (my PhD). So I won't officially end the History of Maths and x, but neither will I at present specifically plan new episodes.

Don't forget, all previous episodes of Travels in a Mathematical World are still available for download, so if you haven't listened to them then you might like to go back and get them. If you have listened to them all, you will have to wait I'm afraid. While you're waiting, an iTunes review would be greatly appreciated ;)

Shape of the cosmos

I have been neglecting this blog a lot recently and have just realised I never posted the video of my latest History of maths and x talk, "Shape of the cosmos", here. This aims to offer mathematical histories for various topics, x. The idea is that each topic is covered in a talk at the University of Nottingham that is available to view online, in an article for iSquared Magazine and is accompanied by a companion podcast released through the Travels in a Mathematical World podcast as episode 57.



Abstract for talk

Watching the sky, you can see the Sun, moon, planets and stars moving above Earth. It is very intuitive to imagine that you are standing still and the objects you are observing are moving above you and this was the view taken by geocentric models of the cosmos. A Greek model, which was dominant in many parts of the world for hundreds of years, had a spherical Earth at the centre of the universe, with the other heavenly bodies orbiting in perfect circles. This talk will outline problems and challenges to this model, and the developments which followed, through the theory of Copernicus, mathematical treatments by Kepler and Newton and questions of what drives planetary motion.

You can find out more about this at History of maths and x website.

Advice on running a lottery

I am just flicking through a book on the history of probability and have come across reference to some writing on lotteries in A Treatise of Taxes & Contributions by William Petty (1662) which I thought I would share here:

Now in the way of Lottery men do also tax themselves in the general, though out of hopes of Advantage in particular: A Lottery therefore is properly a Tax upon unfortunate self-conceited fools; men that have good opinion of their own luckiness, or that have believed some Fortune-teller or Astrologer, who had promised them great success about the time and place of the Lottery, lying Southwest perhaps from the place where the destiny was read.
Now because the world abounds with this kinde of fools, it is not fit that every man that will may cheat every man that would be cheated; but it is rather ordained, that the Sovereign should have the Guardianship of these fools, or that some Favourite should beg the Sovereigns right of taking advantage of such mens folly, even as in the case of Lunaticks and Idiots.
Wherefore a Lottery is not tollerated without authority, assigning the proportion in which the people shall pay for their errours, and taking care that they be not so much and so often couzened, as they themselves would be.
This way of Lottery is used but for small Leavies, and rather upon privato-publick accompts, (then for maintaining Armies or Equipping Fleets,) such as are Aque-Ducts, Bridges, and perhaps Highwayes, etc. Wherefore we shall say no more of it upon this occasion.