This is the video of a talk I gave at the British Logic Colloquium, on the topic of “Random Graphs in Logic and Network Science”, attempting to make some initial connections between two very different ways of thinking about random graphs.
It’s a primary school homework question which causes disagreement among seasoned mathematicians. In order to find the correct answer, I called upon that most rigorous of scientific instruments, the Twitter poll: How many sides does a circle have? — Richard Elwes (@RichardElwes) August 4, 2019 In retrospect I regret not including a “none of the […]
[This is a sequel to my previous post Magforming the Johnson Solids. Please see that for a disclaimer and (if you want to understand the words in this post) the geometrical background. If you only want to see some pretty pictures, then ignore all this stuff and just scroll down…] Last time, we investigated the […]
[Disclaimer: this is not a sponsored post or advert – it is a product purely of my own enthusiasm. But in the interests of full transparency, let me say one thing: for reasons you may come to understand, I developed a deep desire for some Magformers octagons. Although these exist, they are like gold-dust. So […]
Imagine the benefits that could reaped if economic activity could be organised in a rational and scientific way, instead of abandoned to the chaos the marketplace! Imagine the efficiency gains there would be, with workers, managers, farms, and factories all pulling together instead of wastefully competing against each other! For a period, in the Soviet […]
Barry Cooper, who very sadly died on Monday, was a central member of the Leeds logic group since the 1960s. I joined that group as a graduate student in 2001, and since then have had the pleasure to get to know him. He always took an active interest in his younger colleagues, myself included, and was enthusiastic about […]
Yesterday, my twin sons turned one. I have spent an amazing number of hours over the last year watching them. I wondered if this experience might teach me something too, about how to learn. After all, babies are the grandmasters on this subject. In the same time that it has taken me to incrementally advance my […]
I have recently been going through my book Maths 1001 making updates for a forthcoming foreign edition (of which more in future). So I have been looking over mathematical developments since approximately 2009. Thus, I present ten major developments in the subject since around then, arranged arbitrarily in ascending order of top-ness. 10. Mochizuki’s […]
I have a new post at The De Morgan Forum [link updated]. Review copied below: Open a typical book on the theory of pedagogy, and all too often one is confronted by a morass of impenetrable and, one often suspects, unnecessary jargon. So it is a particular pleasure to read Ken Bain’s “What the Best […]
I’ve recently been revisiting Euler’s Theorem. Not that one. No, not the one on this commemorative stamp either. No, no, not the totient function one. (Good guess though.) I mean the one about partitions. What is a partition? It’s simply a way of splitting up a number (a positive integer) into smaller pieces. For instance […]