I did talk about this some time ago, but I found another person who shares similar gripes with the phrase "N times more/less than", and would rather just resort to "N times as much". So at least I know I'm not alone in this!

blogs.scientificamerican.com/r

Also, sampi isn't the fixed adopted symbol for this constant; I only picked it because it's not as overloaded as the other two, and "sampi" I think loosely means "like pi"

Any suggestions for a better representative symbol are welcome 😜

I know there are people who complain about π Day and τ Day only working in a Month/Day format

Some time ago I jokingly introduced a contender "sampi":

ϡ ≡ π/2 ≡ τ/4

So at least we could dedicate 15/7 as Sampi Day (ignoring the zero), celebrating the angle of orthogonality. And there are several notable properties of ϡ that (arguably) aren't as elegant with π or τ...

Maybe Mathstodon should have on 15th July?

Understanding :

"This will provide an in-depth understanding of the emotional roots of MA in primary and secondary children. The researchers will also characterize the relation of MA and general anxiety and links to mathematics performance, and develop robust MA questionnaires."

nuffieldfoundation.org/underst

I'm unsure if this lecturer intentionally planned to hold his midterm test on tomorrow 🤔

Probably gonna see π in Gaussian densities in some questions. Maybe even a question on estimating π via sampling?

"A pair of mathematicians has built on an obscure, 30-year-old mathematical theory to show that soap-filmlike minimal surfaces appear abundantly in a wide range of shapes."

quantamagazine.org/math-duo-ma

Yeesh, that test just now is another reminder of why I loathe exams that disallow help sheets

Sure, you can test me on how well I can apply theorems/algorithms to questions, but I can't additionally memorize that stuff by heart at all

It feels like an unnecessary penalty for my rubbish memory rather than an actual test of my skills

Matt Parker held his 2nd at the Royal Institution promoting some of the ideas/stories in his newest book:

invidio.us/watch?v=6JwEYamjXpA

Timothy Browning has discovered that
\begin{align} 33&=8866128975287528^3\\ &+(-8778405442862239)^3\\ &+(-2736111468807040)^3. \end{align}

This settles all but one case of which two-digit numbers can be represented as a sum of three cubes. The remaining case is $n=42$.

For more, see gilkalai.wordpress.com/2019/03 (where I found out about this) or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sums_of_ (new article I wrote once I found out).

This particular thread on /r/math blew up: a Deputy is asking a question on behalf of an inmate who did a little personal investigation into some number theory

People really like the idea of the Deputy encouraging the inmate to dig deeper into the , and keeping him mentally stimulated + educated while in prison

First time I've seen a lecturer use the notation $\underline{\!\left\lvert n \right.}$ (well something close to that) to denote the factorial

He did admit it was archaic notation that he picked up long ago but still sometimes slips into that habit

Just checked a label on the side, and its English name is apparently TEAPI

Also 茶$\pi$ is supposed to sound like 茶派, which loosely means "tea party". So it's not-so-random wordplay! But still seems unrelated to the mathematical constant.

On a random note, I found this bottled iced that I guess you pronounce as "Cha Pi" (茶$\pi$).

It's sweet red tea with rose + lychee (maybe a little too sweet). I've no idea what $\pi$) has got to do with it.

The more I study maths, the more it feels like the state of "being a mathematician" is an ideal but unattainable limit point, and one can only hope to enter a sufficiently small local neighbourhood around this point

I've heard anecdotes of people who've done PhDs in maths and *still* wouldn't feel comfortable enough calling themselves "mathematicians"

Still on the topic of integration, maths teacher blackpenredpen went through a 6-hour integral-solving marathon (100 integrals!)

youtu.be/dgm4-3-Iv3s

Didn't know until now that MIT has an annual Integration Bee, which as you might guess is like a spelling bee but you're solving fiendish integrals instead of spelling words.

Also the winner - the Grand Integrator - gets a wizard hat 🧙‍♂️

mit.edu/~pax/integrationbee.ht

" for All: Building a Thinking Society": a by Po-Shen Loh during Festival of Learning 2019 @ MIT

Two core points: the motivation behind his founding of Expii, tapping on to provide to today's youth; and getting students interested in in the first place

"Katherine Johnson, the "human computer" whose work was depicted in the 2016 film "Hidden Figures," was recognized on Friday as the agency renamed a building after the pioneer.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration redesignated a building that houses programs essential to safety on space missions in the 100-year old 's native West Virginia as the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility."

abcnews.go.com/Technology/nasa

From what I understand from been drilled by teachers over many years: "X is N times as much as Y" = "X = N * Y", while "X is N times greater than Y" = "X = (N+1) * Y"

Somehow that distinction is weirdly not as universal as it should be in common English and I don't know why

Imma throw this question out here:

Is there a difference between "X times greater" and "X times as much"?

I'm totally biased and think it's totally different, but I find it bizarre that there's apparently ambiguity in English

A Mastodon instance for maths people. The kind of people who make $\pi z^2 \times a$ jokes.
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