Yes, I am as tired as I look - if not more so
So I’m blogging from the Apple Store on Regent Street after attending the Maths in Action day at the Institute of Education, as part of a smaller-than-anticipated party from my college.
After arriving in London on the same train as a man who looked like a clean-shaven Gordon Freeman and getting the Tube to Russell Square, we had a lecture on the science of how diseases spread through social networks.
Unfortunately for the Daily Mail, this doesn’t mean any Facebook users should be quarantined. However, the story of how networks can be modelled is fascinating: there is a ’sweet spot’ in the area of randomisation of small-world networks to provide a “realistic” model of a network. There was also discussion of Erdős–Bacon numbers.
After this, we had some discussion of why buildings fall and collapse during earthquakes, followed by a lecture with the title At Home With Maths, which seemed to cover why cardioids are formed by light reflecting in cups, among other things.
After lunch, we had a lecture from the computer science department at Queen Mary, University of London on mathematically-inspired illusions. Mercifully, it wasn’t Britain’s Got Talent-style, but instead featured computer science such as algorithms to help sort through cards, or tricks of the mind that are also used in MP3 compression. (It sounds weird… I might explain later, if I have the time.)
And finally, just as we were all beginning to drop off, we were re-awakened by the fabulous Colin Wright, a juggler-turned-mathematician-turned-software developer-turned-maritime traffic controller. He led us through the mathematics of juggling, how to describe a juggling trick in writing, and generally spent an afternoon demonstrating why he was a lot better than all of us put together (even though he was in the private sector).
Overall, it was a very interesting series of lectures about the application of maths in the real world. Often, we take for granted how much maths actually goes into everything. (Me typing on this MacBook Pro, for example, involves millions upon millions of mathematical calculations simply to bring the words up on to the screen then portray them, across teh intertubes, to the server.)
Anyway, this brief period of mathematical nerdgasm is now complete. Normal service resumes shortly.