Is Ed Miliband a "maths geek"?

In an article "Ed Miliband: Self-confessed maths 'geek' with a talent for diplomacy", the Telegraph claimed the new leader of the opposition is a "self-confessed maths 'geek'" but where, I wondered, did he "confess" it? James Grime adds a corollary: what did he mean by 'maths geek', anyway? In other words, we are asking, is he one of us? If so, having a pro-maths (or science) chap as leader of the opposition has to be a good thing.

The key paragraph, which defines the two points of the article title, is:

A self-confessed maths "geek", his number-crunching skills were highly prized by Brown at the Treasury. But he also gained a reputation as a diplomat, whose skill at defusing internal rows was reportedly much in demand.

But where is the source? I asked the newspaper on Twitter but have yet to hear back. Imran Khan, Director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, repeated the claim in the Guardian, but he has no primary source. Of course I've Googled, but mostly just find references to the Telegraph article. A little more digging unearthed this BBC article which contains virtually the same paragraph, the one that is the premise for the Telegraph piece, a full ten days earlier. Here, the relevant paragraph is:

A self-confessed Maths "geek", Ed's number-crunching skills were highly prized by Gordon Brown at the Treasury but he also gained a reputation as something of a diplomat, whose skill at defusing rows was reportedly much in demand in the never-ending war of attrition between Brownites and Blairites.

But still no source. Setting aside the possibility that the premise of the Telegraph article is based on a quote from the BBC one (at this point, they might both be based on the same source), can anyone help with the primary source? Or can anyone, through other means, answer the question: is Ed a maths geek, and what does he mean by it?

Update 28/09/10: After @ColinTGraham pointed out Ed is on Twitter, I tweeted my question directly. Of course, it's possible Ed has better things to do with his day, or that he may get one or two other tweets per day to distract from my question.

Update #2 03/10/10: I didn't get a question from Ed, but the next blog post updates with what I've learned.

How I wish I could calculate #pihunt

Today I spent an enjoyable time at Pi-hunting - the story of a mathematical obsession, run by the British Society for the History of Mathematics (BSHM) at the British Science Festival 2010.

Part of this included a presentation by Noel-Ann Bradshaw on mnemonics to remember the digits of pi. An example is the following:

How I wish I could calculate pi.

Look at the number of digits in each word in this sentence. The first word has 3 letters, the second 1, the third 4, and so on. It makes 3141592, the first seven digits of pi. Another example given, faithfully and quickly recorded by Mary Perkins:

How I like a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

There are longer versions including some which are much longer; for example this story encodes the first 740 digits. This is more an example of constrained writing than a useful mnemonic.

Noel-Ann raised the challenge to the audience to come up with their own and so I thought I'd pass this on to you. On the train on the way home I had a go at a tweet-length version (ignore punctuation, including the #):

Now I away,
I leave enlivened by having great and happy
historic, enjoyable, happily unanimous joy
at the exciting BSHM #pihunt

This is topical, although I'm not sure how well it might help you remember pi, but I think we've lost track of that original point, haven't we?

So you can leave yours in a comment below or, even better, why not tweet it using the hashtag #pihunt. This can be any length, just stop at the number of digits that suits you. To help, just in case you can't remember them all, here are some digits of pi:

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...

Dear all: Change of job, email

I just sent this message as an email to a list of people I know but haven't told my new address to yet. This included my email address which, if you didn't receive this and need to know it, you can pick up on the MSOR Network HE STEM webpage.

I am no longer working for the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (a new University Liaison Officer has been appointed and will begin work in November; in the meantime you can contact IMA Assistant Director John Meeson) or the University of Nottingham.

I have taken up a new role with the HEA Maths, Stats and OR Network as part of the National HE STEM Programme Mathematical Sciences Strand. I am HE Curriculum Innovation Advisor with a brief to "explore current learning, teaching and assessment practices within mathematical sciences departments, and disseminate good practice". Further details: www.mathstore.ac.uk/hestem

This means my email address has changed. Please update your records because my IMA address goes to someone else and my Nottingham address goes nowhere.

Some answers to what are, so far, quite frequently asked questions: this role is full time; it runs until 31st July 2012; I don't know what I'm going to do after then; I continue my PhD, as ever, part time; I have not moved to Birmingham, I am commuting from Nottingham by train; about two hours each way; no, the commute isn't bad; if you are interested in funding for a HE curriculum innovation project in mathematical sciences, please email me.

Prime birthdays: James Grime phenomenon

In working out prime birthdays, James Grime remarked that his 1331th prime birthday would be "extra special", and left it to his followers to work out why. The answer, of course, is that it is also his annual birthday. This is an interesting phenomenon: when he is 10957 days old, James Grime will also be 30 years old. This is obviously not true for everyone: there are 365.25 days per year. We count 365 in a normal year and once every four years we catch up by adding an extra day, 29th Feb, in a leap year. Now, 365.25*30 = 10957.5, so the fact that James' 30th birthday coincides is not going to be true for everyone. What are the conditions in which this happens?

Well, whether this happens or not is related to how many catch-up leap years you've crossed during your 10957 days. James was born in 1980, in October. Being born in the first few months after a 29th Feb, James doesn't benefit from his first catch-up for almost four years. This means he is generally owed, rather than owing a day. If he had been born in the months running up to a 29th Feb, he would experience his first extra day very quickly and generally be 'ahead'.

Anyway, further questions occur: how many times might this occur in your life? And where in the leap year cycle would you need to be born in order to benefit from this phenomenon on that birthday? Here is a list. I could explain how I came about this, but this margin is too narrow. It has to do with where you are born in relation to the leap day and whether the prime is above or below 365.25 * number of years.

First, some terminology. Let y_i be a period of 365 days from 1st March to 28th Feb. Let d be the 29th Feb. Then the leap year cycle looks like this:

y₁y₂y₃y₄d

Then the prime birthdays that are also annual birthdays look like this:

years	relevant prime	born during
7	2557	y2y3y4d
10	3253	y3y4d
14	5113	y1y2
15	5479	y2y3y4d
26	9497	y3y4d
30	10957	y1y2
38	13879	y1y2
47	17167	y2y3y4d
55	20089	y2y3y4d
63	23011	y2y3y4d
65	23741	y1y2y3
66	24107	y3y4d
71	25933	y2y3y4d
89	32507	y1y2y3

I may very easily have calculated, or typed, any of this completely incorrectly.