All 22 entries tagged Mathematics

Maths Society Website

Writing about web page http://www.mathsoc.warwick.ac.uk/

I reworked the Warwick Mathematics Society wesbite a few months ago, and made it look way better than it did before, and made it much more flexible. I choose Drupal as my content management system, and found it to be very, very powerful.

I'm bored by the current look of the site though, and since content has been separated from presentation I can easily change the theme. A lot of the site works well, but some bits don't work quite how I wanted them to, but that's because they were added on top, instead of being designed in from the start, and the theme turned out to be not particularly extensible.

Apparently people really like the idea that it changes colour, so I might keep that feature whilst making the site 'look better'. I really want to make the top header section smaller, so that more content can fit on the screen. 

Fixed, fluid or elastic? hmmm...

: 19 Feb 2007 16:00 |  Tags: Computery Stuff Mathematics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Blackboard on Ankle

So today, I can say I did something I’d never done before, and would rather never happened again: I dropped a blackboard on the back of my ankle.

If you don’t realise, blackboards, and especially this one, are very, very heavy beasts.

I now have an extra lumpy ankle, go me!

: 13 Oct 2006 21:26 |  Tags: Funny Mathematics Syndicate |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Warwick Mathematics Society

Writing about web page http://www.mathsoc.warwick.ac.uk

From the start of the 2006/7 academic year, the society known as MathSoc, has become The Warwick Mathematics Society.

Under this new name, we hope to continue to do the things we’ve always done, revision guides, the Mathemagacian etc. But we want to do them bigger, better and with more involvement from society members than ever before. We believe that the WMS can become one of the biggest and most active student societies on campus.

I’m sorta responsible for all that jazz!

Don’t forget to visit us at Socs fair on Friday!

: 05 Oct 2006 10:42 |  Tags: Mathematics Union |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Bikes, Blogs, Maths, you get the idea…

One of my housemates was talking to someone today, and happened to mention my name, he said "I know him!". The aforementioned housemate enquired as to how he knew me, and it turned out he knew me from my blog. This is both cool, and disturbing. Cool because it means people read my blog: Yey! Disturbing because it means people only know me from my blog, and what I tend to write is rather, well, crap. I'm always blogging about "Maths being cool", mushrooms or something. Well from now only top quality non–random non–mushroom based posts:

So my bike (The Missile) broke today. I'm not a happy man. The rear free–hub, now freewheels in both directions, if you don't know what this implies for the operational status of the bike do some research, trouble is its a rare wheelset and is going to be a bit of a bugger to get a replacement part for (clue: its not made by shimano.) And this comes only a week after the Missile was upgraded with GPS navigation.

Climbing! is going quite well at the moment, my arms are reaching the point where they can so something useful, like hold on while my legs do the work. I'm getting more confident in leading too, which is ace, that's real climbing, and infinitely more fun than top roping.

Mathematics (you knew it was coming) is still amazing, revision sucks but sometimes I get something that I didn't really grasp fulling in lectures, like the Implicit Function Theorem, how cool is that dude. After a brief scare, got registered for Number Theory, a huge thank you to the amazing staff at the Mathematics Dept, and the Academic Office.

That's all I have for now…

: 14 May 2006 23:35 |  Tags: Blogging Climbing Cycling Mathematics |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mushrooms and Mathematics

Unfortunately the two topics mentioned in the title are disjoint, but now I'll have a think and probably come up with something where they're not disjoint another time, anyway,

The Mushroom

Fancying a late-night snack after a hard days maths Steven looked into his fridge in horror, as all that could be found was a half a mushroom and some butter (Steven needed to go shopping), soon a plan was formulated, and only minutes later executed. A blend of herbs and spices were put atop said mushroom before it was gently fried on a low-to-medium heat for 2-to-3 minutes. Never had a Tesco closed cup mushroom had so much attention, the eyes of the world were upon him, bearing down, but he stood firm, soaking up the flavours of the hot butter beneath. It was not to last though, the mushroom had to be eaten, as was duly done so. His last moments were captured on film, which can now be shared by all by the wonders of the internetweb.

Mathematics

In the course of writing my second year essay entitled "Classical problems in Geometry" I have been discussing abstract algebra, and polynomials etc. One thing that has always bothered me about the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra is that it uses

, which has all these transcendentals, which, if your polynomial is over are rather useless, and they take up a lot of space, in fact most of the complex plane. Now I realise perfectly well that this has all been worked out before, but the point is I worked this next stuff out for myself, which after being spoonfed maths for over a year, is quite reassuring. We can define the "Algebraic Numbers" as the set of numbers that are solutions to polynomials over , they have cardinality ! which is so cool, I mean, really, who needs analysis anyway? Also we can't actually write all of these numbers down as radicals, but we can, of course, as solutions to polynomials, which is still a hell of a lot better than transcendentals.
Galois, you were the man, 'till you got shot.

: 16 Jan 2006 00:13 |  Tags: Mathematics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mathematical Rigour

I claim to be a Mathematician which means that I get pedantic about use of theorems and definitions, maths should be very precise. Imagine, if you will, my horror as in a computer science lecture a discrete function was differentiated to prove a Theorem. Now I realise it is just a Computer Science lecture, but it had the word "Proof" written above that statement, and it was a mathematical statement, albeit a false one. Now you could claim that its easier to assume that the function is defined on the reals, and then prove it, but I have proved the discrete case and its just as easy. So there really isn't a reason to give untrue proofs.

Rigour people, Rigour.

: 13 Jan 2006 17:25 |  Tags: Computery Stuff Mathematics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Second Year Essay

I wrote the majority of my second year essay today, how cool is that, both the essay and the writing of it. Now all I have to do is teach myself BCH codes and then write a section on that, and Galois Fields, though I pretty much sorted those out now.

Coding theory is really very cool, Mathematical magic if you will, they allow 3G mobiles, more satellite channels and better space exploration, a small round of applause please.

: 11 Jan 2006 21:48 |  Tags: Coding Essay Mathematics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

ISBN Coding

For the purposes of my second year mathematics essay I've been reading about coding theory. This is the field that I'd like to be in when I'm all grown up, but I stumbled upon something really cool:
Grab the book closest to you, it doesn't matter what it is just so long as it has an ISBN too (you may also want to grab a calculator for the next part).

Right, take the first digit of the ISBN multiply it by ten and add it to the second multiplied by nine, add it to the third multiplied by eight and so on all the way to the last digit (if the last is an X add 10). Then divide this number by 11, as long as you've done all the computation correctly then you will always get an integer! How cool is that, error detection in ISBNs!

If you want to know how that works, either do a Google search, or wait a week or two until I've written my essay, and I'll publish the ISBN example.

: 02 Jan 2006 00:33 |  Tags: Books Mathematics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cost of books

Mathematics books seem to cost a fortune, so the University library is an absolute godsend, as an exercise I thought I'd add up how much the books I have checked out cost.

1. £23.00 Groups, Rings and Galois Theory
2. £73.49 Number Theory with Computer Applications
3. £18.95 Elementary Number Theory
4. £91.33 Field Arithmetic
5. £21.22 Vector Analysis
6. £16.99 Irresistible Integrals
7. £87.50 Profinite Groups
8. £39.99 Introduction to Fractals and Chaos
9. £34.95 Fractal Geometry
10. £18.95 An Introduction to Harmonic Analysis

Thats £426.37 worth of books, thats quite a hefty chunk of change. Its slightly worrying though, all the books related to Algebra are really expensive, and I would like to buy these books at some point, I'd better get writing some of my own and make some money.

: 13 Dec 2005 19:17 |  Tags: Books Library Mathematics |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Odds and Ends

An odd post of some things, but I can't be bothered to split them up!

1. Right so I've been working on a java application for my phone (K750i), more specifically a scientific calculator. There are so many times that I need a calculator, and I only have my phone on me, and the built in calc sucks, it really does. So I've loosely implemented casio's SVPAM system using a recursive descent parser and some clever tricks. Also I've had to make provisions for soft buttons, as the phone doesn't have a sin key. I have places for all the buttons to go, its just making the images that takes the time. Also working within the j2me framework is really difficult, its very crippled. You can't, for example call Math.pow it doesn't exist in the j2me framework, you have to write your own routines for lots of things. Formatting the result of calculations (strictly a decimal at the moment, may add fractions) was a challenge as there is no built in routine, that part took a good hour to write.
But seeing the almost–finished result working on my phone is such a great feeling, there's not much else like it, but it works in really neat ways. I tend to put very cool but frivolous features into most of my programs, but in this app they really are cool, you'll just have to wait and see!
I only need to add error handling and then add all the little soft buttons so I should have a working calculator before long!

2. I've found a place that will repair my fleece, but it'll cost at least £15 for a new zip, rubbish. I only need the actual zipper, which probably costs 50p to produce.

3. Got back into politics this week, and managed to see PMQs, so good, go Cameron, he seems like he will provide some opposition, even if he is policy light at the moment.

4. My housemate gave me a Christmas present, which I opened early :–), that was a musical compact disc type device round thing. But seriously, he'd tried to pick out music that I'd like, but had failed many times in the past, but he got it so right this time.
Sigur Rós
There are two words I'd use to describe them,
Beautifully hunting,
and their transposition (kind of),
hauntingly beautiful.
I got their untitled album, and its stunning. The music sounds so familiar, but so fresh and different, it sounds great. And the singing isn't even in English! Even better, as its all about the sound the voice makes, not the words.
Thank you Tom.

5. I can't quite believe there's only 15 days 'till crimbo, and I haven't bought any presents, well except one, but that was because I needed to give it before I left cov. I have ideas for some people, but others are so hard, the quit smoking book didn't go down too well with my brother last year :)

6. That's enough ramblings methinks, get back to whatever you were doing, go on, stop reading.

don't you ever listen?

: 10 Dec 2005 00:19 |  Tags: Computery Stuff Java Mathematics |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem