Interesting links
The chaos of sudoku - how a new program to solve sudoku puzzles goes through periods of chaos which corresponds to how hard humans find the puzzle.
Nate Silver's blog which exactly predicted the outcome of the US election using the power of statistics.
Tails You Win: the Science of Chance A documentary film being broadcast on BBC4 at 9pm on 18th October, featuring Professor David Spiegelhalter telling stories of chance and statistics. If you enjoy Lecture 3, don't miss this!
More or Less A BBC Radio 4 show explaining (and debunking) maths and statistics in the news. A recent example is the debunking of the headline "100 cod left in the North Sea", discussed nicely in this article.
Zeno's paradoxes An article about Zeno's paradoxes (lecture 2) which some references at the bottom for further reading.
TED talk about fractals by Ron Eglash who is an ethno-mathematician: he studies the way math and cultures intersect. He has shown that many aspects of African design -- in architecture, art, even hair braiding -- are based on perfect fractal patterns.
When numbers were dotty Article in the Telegraph by Marcus du Sautoy about Mayan counting systems and why they believe the end of the world is nigh. (Published 29th September 2011.)
BBC documentary about how children use rhymes to learn how to count. (Broadcast on 11th February 2011)
Pi Day An article by Matt Parker in the Guardian about the wonders of pi, written on March 14th - 3.14
The mathematics of being nice Interview in New Scientist with Martin Nowak, who uses game theory to study some of biology's biggest questions.
60 second adventures in thought
Lovely 60-second cartoons by the Open University about some deep philosophical ideas. You might be especially interested in these:
- Achilles and the Tortoise (see Lecture 2)
- Hilbert's Infinite Hotel (see Lecture 9)
The million-dollar millennium problems
Written about by Matt Parker in the Guardian.
Maths in the New York Times
All of these articles by Steven Strogatz are well written and well worth a read.
Article about a company trying to cheat Google's PageRank algorithm (see lecture 5!)
History of Mathematics
- A Brief History of Matehmatics by Marcus du Sautoy, originally aired on BBC Radio 4. There are 10 fifteen-minute podcasts, each one concentrating on a particular personality in mathematics.
- The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive is probably the most comprehensive maths history website I know of. Find biographies of all your favourite mathematicians, articles on history topics, and a list of which mathematicians were born or died today!
- Famous Mathematicians is a relatively new website giving biographies of famous mathematicians.
In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg sometimes discusses mathematical topics on Radio 4.
- Random and pseudo-random - Randomness and its uses, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers and Colva Roney-Dougal. (New!)
- Archimedes - Looking at the achievements of the ancient Greek mathematician, with guests Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo and George Phillips.
- Calculus - The feud between Newton and Leibniz on who invented calculus first, with guests Simon Schaffer, Patricia Fara and Jackie Stedall.
- Chaos theory - Is the universe a fundamentally chaotic place? With Susan Greenfield, David Papineau and Neil Johnson.
- Cryptography - The origins and history of codes, with guests Simon Singh, Fred Piper and Lisa Jardine.
- Fermat's Last Theorem - NEW! A discussion of one of the most iconic problems in mathematics, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, Vicky Neale and Samir Siksek.
- The Fibonacci Sequence - The beauty and uses of this famous sequence, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, Jackie Stedall and Ron Knott.
- Game Theory - A discussion of the mathematics of decision-making, with guests Iain Stewart, Andrew Colman and Richard Bradley.
- Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem - How maths isn't as certain as we think, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, John Barrow and Philip Welch.
- Imaginary numbers - Are they real, and how are they useful? With guests Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart and Caroline Series.
- Indian mathematics - How Indian mathematics provided the foundations for our modern way of thinking, with guests George Gheverghese Joseph, Colva Roney-Dougal and Dennis Almeida.
- Infinity - The counterintuitive nature of infinity, with guests Ian Stewart, Robert Kaplan and Sarah Rees.
- Lovelace - The "enchantress of numbers" who created the first computer program, with guests Patricia Fara, Doron Swade and John Fueg.
- Mathematics - The importance of mathematics in the 20th century, with guests Ian Stewart and Brian Butterworth.
- Mathematics and music - Mathematical structures in music, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, Robin Wilson and Ruth Tatlow.
- Mathematics' unintended consquences - How pure maths has had many surprising uses, with guests John Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal and Marcus du Sautoy.
- Mathematical storytelling - Analysing logic in stories, with guests John Allen Paulos and Marina Warner.
- Negative numbers - A history of mystery and suspicion, with guests Ian Stewart, Colva Roney-Dougal and Raymond Flood.
- Pi - The history of this famous number, with guests Robert Kaplan, Eleanor Robson and Ian Stewart.
- The Poincaré Conjecture - The great conjecture and whether it may have been solved, with guests June Barrow-Green, Ian Stewart and Marcus du Sautoy.
- Prime numbers - The buildings blocks of numbers and how they're necessary for our financial system, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, Robin Wilson and Jackie Stedall.
- Probability - Its uses in gambling and physics, with guests Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal and Ian Stewart.
- Pythagoras - The influence and mathematics of this great Greek figure, with guests Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor and Ian Stewart.
- Renaissance maths - How maths came out of the dark ages, with guests Robert Kaplan, Jim Bennett and Jackie Stedall.
- Symmetry - Its appearance in art, music and now physics, with guests Fay Dowker, Marcus du Sautoy and Ian Stewart.
- Zero - History of the number and its strange place in our culture, with guests Robert Kaplan, Ian Stewart and Lisa Jardine.
Email Julia if you think of more links you would like to see added!
