Podcast Finale/Trailer

The Travels in a Mathematical World podcast has ended because I am moving on to another job. Because of this, I have put together a brief finale episode. This includes a series of clips from a wide range of the episodes. I hope the clips will show the podcast to be interesting and varied, covering topics that are at times poignant and important; at others just a bit of fun. The idea is that people tend to download the most recent episode of a podcast they have newly found and this hopes to encourage them to download the rest. Perhaps it will also be useful as a sort of 'trailer' for the podcast.

There are 64 episodes of the podcast available through www.travelsinamathematicalworld.co.uk. Make sure you download the full set of 64 episodes! And tell your friends! You can find out what I'm now doing in podcasting via peterrowlett.net/podcasts.

Podcast: Episode 64 - Peter McOwan, his career

These are the show notes for episode 64 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 64 is the number of squares on a chessboard. More about 64 from Number Gossip.

Peter McOwan of Queen Mary, University of London, spoke to me about his career, particularly how mathematics helped him work in mathematical physics, medical imaging, computer-generated holography, optical neural networks, psychology, cybernetics, mathematical modelling of the biological brain, optical illusions, magic tricks, computer vision, teaching and outreach!

Peter spoke about the Living with Robots and Interactive Companions (LIREC) project. Find out about The Magic of Computer Science from Computer Science for Fun. Peter is co-author of The Manual of Mathematical Magic.

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

Mathematics Today August 2010: University Liaison Officer's Report

Now this is not the end

I am leaving my employment with the IMA. I am going to take up a post as HE Curriculum Innovation Adviser for the Maths, Stats and OR Network as part of the mathematics strand of the National HE STEM Programme, until July 2012. I have enjoyed my work with the IMA immensely and feel some regret at leaving, but my interests have always been drawn to HE maths education and the role in Birmingham combines my interests very well.

I have worked for the IMA since January 2008 and, with your help, I have been engaged with an active programme of engagement with university students in the past two academic years. For example, over three semesters, spring 2009, autumn 2009 and spring 2010 I have given 74 IMA 'Clement W. Jones Lectures' to nearly 2,300 maths students and over 150 staff at 47 universities. And there are more understated influences, for example I designed and sent IMA leaflets to every maths department and every careers service in a university with a maths department in the country. I do some part time work at the University of Nottingham and I know the pile of IMA leaflets in the foyer there has been quite depleted over the last month or so of the academic year. Hopefully, this pattern has been replicated elsewhere. I sincerely hope this work will be reflected in the graduate recruitment numbers in this and future years.

I hope I leave the University Liaison programme in a good state. Here are four areas of activity in particular that I think will be important for engagement with university students and graduates in the future:

• e-student: The IMA is working on an initiative to allow students a free 'e-membership' via the website. Students will be able to sign up to an area of the IMA website and get access to interesting and helpful content. There are many pressures on student finances and students are often not aware of the benefits they might find in joining the IMA, so this free signup to an area of the website will give students an opportunity to find out about the IMA and why they might want to join as Associate Members when they graduate. I see no reason why any student would not want to sign up for this service, with the result that many more graduates per year ought to be aware of, and join, the Institute.
• Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today conferences: The first Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today conference was the inspired idea of Noel-Ann Bradshaw and Tony Mann, who organised the conference at the University of Greenwich in spring 2010. At this conference undergraduate students presented on topics of interest to them and the event was a marvellous opportunity for students to practice their skills and take part in the wider mathematics community. The University Liaison programme has agreed to fund further Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today conferences at Manchester in autumn 2010 and at London Metropolitan in spring 2011. I think these have the opportunity to be the IMA's flagship events for undergraduate engagement and have a real impact on the Institute's future.
• Professional networking: For postgraduates and early career mathematicians, the Early Career Mathematicians' Group goes from strength to strength, providing an opportunity to meet others in a similar situation and to engage with other mathematicians in academia and industry.
• Providing excellent careers resources: Recent months have seen the re-launched Maths Careers website make substantial improvements as a resource for student career advice and inspiration. If you haven't visited it recently I encourage you to do so. My podcast, Travels in a Mathematical World, has released around 60 ten minute audio recordings of mathematicians speaking in their own words about their work, maths history and maths news stories. I will not be releasing any new episodes, but this will continue to be a resource for undergraduate students' career inspiration via www.travelsinamathematicalworld.co.uk

Although I am leaving this role with the IMA, I am not going so far away. I continue to be a Member and to work on the committee of the East Midlands Branch. Perhaps I will meet some of you as part of my new job as well. I trust you will all continue to evangelise for the IMA, helping to make students and early career colleagues aware of the Institute and the reasons you are a member. Remember that you get more out of your membership the more you are willing to put in, that membership has many advantages for individuals and that the Institute benefits from a strong and active membership.

New Maths Building

When I started at Nottingham, I was told my office arrangements would only be temporary as we were looking to build a new building. Now that I am leaving (didn't know? You haven't been listening to the Math/Maths Podcast!) I will not, after all, be moving to this building. Building work has started, though. Here's a picture:



They're extending an existing building (IESSG), although I think the extension will be substantially bigger than the existing building.

This means Nottingham will follow several other recent moves by UK mathematics departments into new buildings. Off the top of my head, there's Cambridge (2000-2003), Heriot-Watt (2005), Nottingham Trent (2005), Manchester (2007), Bath (2010), and upcoming at Oxford and Bristol. There are probably others I've forgotten.

Podcast: Episode 63 - Rhys Phillips, Electrostatic hazards in aircraft

These are the show notes for episode 63 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 63 is the smallest number out of two (the other being 69) such that the common alphabetical value of its Roman representation is equal to itself (LXIII - 12+24+9+9+9 = 63). More about 63 from Number Gossip.

This time on the podcast, we hear from Rhys Phillips of the Lightning Direct Effects Group, European Aeronautic Defence & Space Company (EADS), who told me about his work as a research engineer around electrostatic hazards in aircraft.

You can find out more about EADS on their website. You can read a profile of Rhys Phillips on the Maths Careers website.

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

My puzzles stall

As I am leaving the IMA (didn't know? You haven't been listening to the Math/Maths Podcast!), I am trying to document what I do. I am videoing some bits that might be useful for my successor to see what I do and see if they like it for their own use. In the middle of this, a request came in from Hazel Kendrick, Project Officer for the HE STEM Programme at the IMA, who is looking to develop a small kit of resources for a maths stand at a careers fair or science fair aimed at 11-18 year olds. Although my small kit of puzzles is used at university careers fairs, I thought sharing this might be useful. It is much easier to video myself showing the puzzles than trying to describe each one, so here we go. It's 12 minutes long, so split over two YouTube videos (below).

My strategy at a careers fair is to provide an experience which is different from the employers. I want to mark the IMA out as different. Sometimes students ask me what jobs the IMA is offering and I have to explain we aren't a graduate recruiter. I do puzzles because I think they are enticing - and everyone who I entice leaves the stall with a Maths careers flyer and a copy of the IMA Careers Advice Booklet - and to give the students some break out time in what can be an intense process (sometimes hours spent talking to potential employers). I also usually give everyone a copy of the dots puzzle in the second video, in the hope they will find it the next day and have a go at solving it, remembering as they do that the IMA exists. I've been complimented several times by organisers of careers fairs for my approach.

Podcast: Episode 62 - William Simpson, Solar physics

These are the show notes for episode 62 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 62 is the smallest inconsummate number in base 10: no number is a 62-multiple of the sum of its digits. More about 62 from Number Gossip.

William Simpson of the University of St. Andrews talks about his work in solar stresses and solar flares, his theological motivations for studying mathematics and physics and the opportunities for study abroad under the American National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) Program. I spoke to William at the IMA Tomorrow's Mathematicians Today undergraduate conference at Greenwich.

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

Podcast: Episode 61 - Chris Marchant, Outreach

These are the show notes for episode 61 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 61 is prime, the smallest prime whose reversal is a square. More about 61 from Number Gossip.

This week on the podcast we hear from Chris Marchant, Outreach Manager for The Department Of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Liverpool. Chris tells us about the department's work in outreach activities.

You can find out all about the Liverpool Mathematics Society (LMS) on its website. You can read an article about the Fun Maths Roadshow on the teachernet Secondary Teachers magazine website as "Figuring it out".

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

Podcast: Episode 60 - Sarah Norton, systems engineering

These are the show notes for episode 60 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 60 is the base of the Babylonian and earlier numeral systems. You can read some history of this system, how it worked and a discussion of possible reasons for 60 being the base at the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive page on Babylonian numerals.

Sarah Norton of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Company (EADS) talks about how her mathematics degree helps her in her work in systems engineering and a specific application she is working on in creating a system for fire engines responding to mobile phone emergency calls.

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

Wanted: IMA University Liaison Officer

I am leaving my roles at the IMA and University of Nottingham to take up a new role as HE Curriculum Innovation Advisor with the Maths, Stats and OR Network as part of the National HE STEM Programme. What will I be doing? Here's some blurb from the job advert:

The National HE STEM programme aims to review and enhance the content, delivery and assessment of the undergraduate mathematics science curriculum. The HE Curriculum Advisor will work closely with other members of the MSOR Network and the mathematical science departments across England and Wales to facilitate and support innovation within the mathematical sciences curriculum, primarily through funded curriculum innovation projects.

One result of this is that the IMA are seeking my replacement. The job advert has been posted with a deadline of 30 July 2010. Blurb from this job advert:

A University Liaison Officer is required to forge links with all those in the mathematics departments; working with university mathematics societies; encouraging links with the IMA early career mathematicians group; presenting details of career options that follow a degree in mathematics and developing ways to stay in touch with graduate mathematicians once they leave university.
It is anticipated that the post will be of interest to persons of at least graduate standing (in mathematics) who are enthusiastic about mathematics; good communicators; committed to achieving the highest professional standards and able to develop an empathy with mathematics students. It is possible that the person appointed will have experience of student engagement mechanisms and a keen interest in helping to reinforce the aims of the Institute.
The successful applicant will work from home, but will need to be able to visit Southend (our Head Office), London (for meetings) and many universities throughout the UK on the Institute’s behalf in pursuit of their responsibilities.

Further details and an application form are available from the IMA Careers webpages.

A little personal spin: Being University Liaison Officer for the IMA has been the best job I have had. I'm so sad to be leaving, but my interests (not least through my PhD) are drawn towards improving maths education at HE level and the new role looks like a brilliant mixture of all my interests. Onwards, ever onwards!

Podcast: Episode 59 - Katie Steckles and Rufus Roberts, Maths busking

These are the show notes for episode 59 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 59 is prime, the center prime number in a 3x3 prime magic square that has the smallest possible magic constant 177. More about 59 from Number Gossip.

At Outreach in Collaboration III at the Centre for Effective Learning in Science at Nottingham Trent University, Katie Steckles and Rufus Roberts talk to me about the phenomenon of 'maths busking'. Find out more at mathsbusking.com.

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

Podcast: Episode 58 - Ben Beech, Air Traffic Control

These are the show notes for episode 58 of the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast. 58 is the smallest Smith number with a prime sum of digits. A Smith number is a composite number for which the sum of its digits equals the sum of all the digits appearing in its prime divisors. More about 58 from Number Gossip. You can find more than you ever wanted to know about Smith numbers at shyamsundergupta.com.

Ben Beech talks about his work for National Air Traffic Control, Swanwick. This recording was made during a careers event at the University of Portsmouth. At the time of recording, Ben was nearing the end of his training.

Plus has an interview with a military air traffic controller, "Career interview: Military air traffic controller". The BBC have an interview with a Ground Movement controller.

You can find out more about the IMA by visiting http://www.ima.org.uk/student/. You can find out more about what I do by reading this blog, by following me on Twitter or visiting peterrowlett.net. Join the Travels in a Mathematical World Podcast Facebook Fan Page.

Unbroadcastable, an ode to podcasting

Recently I listened to Conway on Gardner, over at Mathfactor. I enjoyed this a great deal and it made me want to say something about podcasting as a format.

I think the conversation between Chaim Goodman-Strauss and John Conway (h2g2; wikipedia) is unsuitable for broadcast in several ways - it is rambling and lacks the structure of questions, has a lot of background noise and through a good part of it has an occasional loud crashing noise in the background. It needs a serious edit. Terrible! It also happens to be a fascinating listen and I am extremely grateful Chaim was able to record it and share it with us. Conway is relaxed and engaging and the lack of formality works very well. I think this points to the power of podcasting - to be able to capture these rare and interesting moments and offer a glimpse into a world that otherwise would not be open to us. If the battery hadn't run out after an hour, I, for one, would have happily carried on listening.

Earlier in the year I spoke at the BSHM/MSOR Network workshop 'History of Mathematics in the Undergraduate Curriculum' and Tony Mann of Greenwich spoke about the opportunity historians of the future have if people now use the ready availability of recording equipment to capture current mathematicians talking about their work, and pointed out my podcast Travels in a Mathematical World as a good example of this process of building up an interesting resource for the future. With Travels in a Mathematical World, I deliberately try to minimise my voice; I choose someone with an interesting story to tell and give them space to tell it. In order to be opportunistic I make the recordings using a small camera that works as a digital voice recorder wherever I meet the person, even though that can produced mixed quality recordings.

Another podcast I have recently become involved with is the Math/Maths Podcast for Pulse-Project. This is a conversation between me and American maths podcaster Samuel Hansen about what's happening in the world of maths and in our mathematical lives. We're hoping people will write in and share their experiences with us as well. Again, this is rough and ready and insufficiently planned, scripted and edited to be a real broadcast but it is easy to produce and I think it is a format that works really well in a podcast. It interests me greatly to see a point of view on mathematics from another part of the world, and to try to draw out similarities and differences between our perspectives on the world.

I have also recently been listening to Combinations and Permutations, hosted by Samuel Hansen. This is a group of friends getting together and chewing over a mathematical topic. It frequently wanders off topic and involves quite a lot of swearing. Again, I can't imagine this working as a mainstream broadcast - it is too 'maths' for the 'having a laugh'-chat format, yet too silly and rude for a serious science broadcast. It is very good that Samuel is able to produce this unique oddity and I am delighted that podcasting gives the opportunity for him to make this available.

These outputs are not of wide enough interest for a mainstream audience (although they needn't be limited to a mathematical audience either) and they would need to be more polished if the idea was to draw people (particularly children) into an interest in maths. Nonetheless, I think what is produced is interesting and worthwhile and I'm glad that podcasting exists as an output for these endeavours.

Carnival of Mathematics #67

Editorial

The Carnival of Mathematics #66 was hosted at Wild About Math! This is Carnival of Mathematics #67.

If you're new to the Carnival of Mathematics, check out Mike Croucher's introduction at Walking Randomly.

Photo by woody1778a.

My first task is to choose an interesting fact about the number of the carnival. Well, the excellent Number Gossip tells me as well as being Odd, Prime, Square-free, Lucky, Odious, Deficient and a Lazy caterer, 67 is the largest prime which is not the sum of distinct squares, which seems interesting. Just to demonstrate the level of trivia in the world of numbers, here are some other contenders:

• 67 is the smallest number which is palindromic in bases 5 and 6 (What's Special About This Number?);
• 67 is the only number such that the common alphabetical value of its Roman representation is equal to its reversal (LXVII - 12+24+22+9+9=76) (Number Gossip);
• 67 is the sum of five consecutive primes (exercise for the reader to work out which) (Wikipedia);
  
• 67 is the smallest prime which contains all ten digits when raised to the tenth power (Number Gossip).

Right, on with the Carnival...

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Headlines

Since I've started a 'news' theme, we'd better have some headlines.

Over at AMS Math in the Media, Allyn Jackson edits a collection of Summaries of Media Coverage of Math for June 2010.

It is worth taking a look at the MAA's Math in the News archive for recent maths news.

The next Carnival of Mathematics host, Plus Magazine, have published their issue 55.

My own interest in mathematics news and maths in the media is fuelled by my role as the "maths" half of the new Math/Maths Podcast, a weekly conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA.

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Culture

At the Make: Online blog, George Hart, for the Museum of Mathematics, writes a Math Monday article on Mathematical beading. This includes the image above - can you tell what it is? Go to the article to find out. George gives five examples by Bih-Yaw Jin, and asks What interesting shapes can you make with beads?

At General Musings, Daniel Colquitt considers the Sierpiński Triangle in Nothing inside infinity, giving an interesting roundup as part of a series of articles he has written on objects which are infinite in some dimensions but finite in others.


Edmund Harriss of Maxwell's Demon has been playing with spreading text over tilings and gives some examples based on some of his favourite typefaces in Tiling Typography. The example above is a Penrose Tiling based on Garamond.

Alexander Bogomolny of CTK Insights writes A curious variant of the Pythagorean theorem, in which he gives a symmetric form of the Pythagorean theorem in which no one angle is being paid special attention.

Photo by quinn.anya.

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Education

Joel Feinstein of Explaining Mathematics has been screencasting his lectures (read his case study), but recently has been struggling with the question of whether students really benefit from his doing this; so he asks: Should we make videos of our lectures available?

Tom DeRosa of I Want to Teach Forever writes a provocative post Why We Fail at Teaching the Language of Data, in which he gives his opinion on the emphasis placed on data analysis at school level and argues more time should be spent learning to look critically at data.

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Design

Picture by wburris.

In The design of mathematical notation at The Number Warrior, Jason Dyer considers mathematical notation as a design issue and gives a series of examples of design that hinders, rather than aides, understanding.

On the subject of poorly designed notation, don't get Murray Bourne of squareCircleZ started on the notation for natural logarithm! In Logarithms – a visual introduction, he motivates logarithms from a historical perspective, and uses an example to show how logarithms are useful and how they are used.

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Gadgets

Photo by Extra Ketchup.

Recently I hosted a seminar by Birgit Loch at the University of Nottingham and played with her new iPad, stuffed full with every free mathematics app in the Store. There was some interesting stuff there, so I am pleased to see Mike Croucher has started a new series of articles on Walking Randomly to explore the options for doing mathematics on this new platform. Start with Math on iPad #1. Meanwhile, David Warlick writes at 2¢ Worth with a roundup of tools for taking mindmap notes in Taking Notes on the iPad.

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Computers and technology

Fëanor writes to say that at bit-player is Disentangling Gaussians, in which Brian Hayes writes about how ideas going back to the 1890s have been used recently to provide a computational (polynomial time) solution to a statistical question answered, to a mathematician's satisfaction, in the 1950s and 60s.

At f(unctional)=>f(un), Samuel Jack asks: How do you guess what language a piece of text is written in? The answer is "using math!" Samuel shows a very simple, but surprisingly effective algorithm and provides an implementation in C#.

Photo by Nat W.

John D. Cook at The Endeavour writes Math library functions that seem unnecessary, in which he gives examples of functions in the standard C math library that seem unnecessary at first glance, and the special cases that make them indispensable.

Fredrik Johansson posted Incomplete elliptic integrals complete, in which he describes his implementation of the arbitrary precision calculation of incomplete elliptic integrals in the free, open source mathematical software mpmath.

Katie O'Hare of NAG writes with a post by Mick Pont to The NAG Blog, which asks Why is writing good numerical software so hard? Mick discusses the reasons why software development is still needed.

At the Wolfram Blog, Ed Pegg Jr writes in The Circles of Descartes with a description of the Descartes Circle Theorem and an implementation in Mathematica.

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Review

"Shecky Riemann" of Math-Frolic! writes with The Savant Mind At Work, a book review of "Embracing the Wide Sky" by autistic savant & "math whiz" Daniel Tammet.

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Puzzles

James Grime writes with a classic puzzle he recently featured on his YouTube channel: Two Trains One Fly. This YouTube video is below and the solution can be found in Two Trains One Fly Solution.

Meanwhile, over at Mind Your Decisions, Presh Talwalkar discusses solutions for another of James' YouTube puzzles in Salem witches – a math puzzle.

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Cartoon

xkcd: Handy exam trick: when you know the answer but not the correct derivation, derive blindly forward from the givens and backward from the answer, and join the chains once the equations start looking similar. Sometimes the graders don't notice the seam.

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Sport

Photo by CLF.

The Plus blog has a roundup of World Cup maths stories, for those who are that way inclined, while Tim Gowers is musing on a year of tennis in A mathematician watches tennis II.

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And finally...

To end on a bit of fun, like all quality news reports, during a recording of the Math/Maths Podcast, Samuel Hansen showed me a couple of spoofs from David Simmons-Duffin: In arXiv vs. snarXiv, the game is to say which of two article titles is from the real arXiv, a "highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server for research articles", and which is from the spoof snarXiv, a "ran­dom high-energy the­ory paper gen­er­a­tor incor­po­rat­ing all the lat­est trends, entropic rea­son­ing, and excit­ing mod­uli spaces". Meanwhile, the Theorem of the Day generator is cooking up realistic looking 'theorems' and 'proofs' using a context free grammar.

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Here ends Carnival #67. If you liked it, the sister carnival Math Teachers at Play #27 has been posted at Ramblings of a Math Mom. Carnival of Mathematics #68 will be hosted at Plus on 6th August. Please submit your articles via the carnival submission form.