Stretching mathematical minds

Okay, here's a word association test. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say... mathematicians? Hands up how many of you said 'Fun'? What, no one?

If you are a mathematician, or a physicist making heavy use of maths, you may feel there's plenty of fun in your world, but just in case you needed a bit more, I can highly recommend UCL's new e-magazine for mathy people, Chalkdust. (Rather an odd choice of title - a bit like a computing magazine calling itself Abacus. But we are dealing with mathematicians.)

What I ought to say straight away is that Chalkdust (my spellchecker insists on converting that to Chalkiest) is not a magazine version of an Ian Stewart type, light and fluffy popular maths book. This is a magazine that doesn't shy away from including the equations of general relativity. But having said that, you don't have to be a genuine, heavy duty mathematician to get something out of it. When I was at university, my maths supervisor gave me some excellent advice, which was 'if the maths doesn't make sense to you yet, just go with the flow, keeping going and it will gradually fit into place.' If you take that kind of viewpoint, looking at the scarier equations, but not worrying too much if you don't understand them, it has something for anyone who has A-level maths or more.

After all, who wouldn't love a mathematical analysis of Pac Man, producing the optimal strategy, or an exploration of the mathematics of wormholes? Okay, quite a lot of people - but I did.

There are parts of the text that feel a touch amateurish, perhaps reflecting that it is produced by students. This was particularly the case with the (very) long interview with Dr Hannah Fry, where the wording sometimes seemed like the work of a 12-year-old, for example:

Boys are like, this maths is hard; whereas the girls are like, I find this maths hard.

Hmm. It would also be sensible, if they want some history of maths, to talk to someone who is better informed, as the section on Ada King, Countess of Lovelace had a number of historical inaccuracies, notably:

And if she had [done the 'PR' for Babbage's Analytical Engine], who knows what would have happened. The analytical engine could have been built and then the first computer could have been created a hundred years before it actually was.

Well, no, it couldn't have been built, because the analytical engine would have required engineering that was far beyond the capabilities of the time, if it could be constructed at all in mechanical form. It's also an exaggeration (if frequently repeated) to say that King 'wrote the first program' for it. It would be more accurate to say that she translated a paper about the analytical engine written by Luigi Menabrea from French into English, adding a long set of notes in which she described how the machine might be used.

Inevitably a production like this is a trifle hit and miss - but if you take your maths seriously, you could find a surprising amount to interest and entertain you. Sounds worth popping over to straight away. Or at least, after solving* the travelling salesman problem and discovering the best route.

* I know, I know. It was a joke. If you don't know why it's a joke, this might not be the magazine for you.

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

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