Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m grateful to Dr Phil Knight for passing on the following piece of unconventional research (he says “I saw this and thought of you”). Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have investigated the puzzling question of why different mammals, ranging … Continue reading →

How much do you think your opinions are affected by the people around you? And how much do you think they are affected by the people one, or two, or three steps removed from you — by friends of friends … Continue reading →

Those of you who keep an eye on the BBC’s Scottish news pages may have noticed an article that appeared today about losses to Scottish honey bee colonies. This article is based on the findings of the latest survey of … Continue reading →

Those who recall Dr Andre Sonnet’s entry to this year’s Images of Research competition may like to know that he’s not alone in seeing the visual appeal of mathematicians’ blackboards. A recent article in the London Guardian describes the work … Continue reading →

In lieu of the regular quotation supply, here are links to a couple of videos that might provide a stimulating alternative to the Boxing Day movie schedule. Both are from iconic scientific/cultural figures who tend to divide opinion rather strongly; … Continue reading →

For anyone else who didn’t manage to make it to the British Science Festival in Aberdeen this summer, even with the promise of mathematical talks to entice you, here’s a nice wee video in which Dr Kevin Houston of the … Continue reading →

On the Wolfram blog, there’s a nice article analysing Felix Baumgartner’s recent supersonic skydiving feat in terms of (reasonably) elementary Newtonian mechanics. They show how to calculate his trajectory by integrating the governing equation in Mathematica: for those of you … Continue reading →

We emerge from our slumbers briefly to let you know about a cameo appearance of mathematics in a Radio 4 comedy sketch programme. Episode 2 of John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme on Thursday 20 September featured a scene in which Pythagoras … Continue reading →

Some familiar faces will be absent from the Department when teaching starts again in September. In particular, two contributors to Degree of Freedom will be moving on to better things: Dr Mateja Prešern will be taking up a lectureship in the School … Continue reading →

Dr Peter Davidson of the Maths Skills Centre has drawn my attention to a sequence of posts on Tim Gowers’s excellent blog, in which Prof. Gowers lets us into his thought processes as he tackles Cambridge maths exam questions. Well … Continue reading →