New Scientist puzzle-setter Rob Eastaway is featured on the NCETM website in a three-part essay on ‘joined-up mathematics’, the first two instalments of which are online.
Eastaway’s essay is required, and fun, reading for anyone following the directions that maths and science education are taking, with the emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) and the sometimes forced emphasis on making maths relevant.
If ever a person needed proof that maths has its uses outside the classroom and the engineering lab, they might find it here. A cunning addition to Google Mail is designed to prevent tired and emotional emailers from sending messages they may later regret.
Bees might be rather good mathematicians. It seems bees could have a finely-tuned ability to calculate averages. The famous ‘waggle dance’ is a shimmy that bees returning to the hive perform for their fellow workers, a communication tool that helps guide others to the best flowers.
Solve any one of “The World’s 23 toughest maths questions” and you’ll be the toast of the science world, and the darling of US military research.
DARPA, US military’s boffin-central, has put out a call for solutions to some of the most intractable scientific issues of our day. DARPA (which, incidentially, founded the military forerunner of the Internet, ARPANET) hopes this challenge will have the effect of:
“dramatically revolutionizing mathematics and thereby strengthening DoD’s [Department of Defense's] scientific and technological capabilities.”
