Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Wednesday 23rd July Tour of the National Computer Museum at Bletchley Park Sheridan Williams, Andrew Spencer and Chris Monk http://www.tnmoc.org/ Sheridan Williams is a tour guide at the museum; Andrew Spencer is a corporate Events & Groups Manager at museum and Chris Monk is a learning co-ordinator at the museum. We began our tour with […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Wednesday 23rd July Tour of Bletchley Park Once Britain’s Best Kept Secret, today Bletchley Park is a heritage site and vibrant tourist attraction. Open daily, visitors can explore some of the iconic WW2 Codebreaking Huts and Blocks and marvel at the astonishing achievements of the Codebreakers whose work is said to have helped shorten the […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Tuesday 22nd July Professor Peter McOwan The Maths & Computing Magic Show Any magic trick is part performance and part mathematics. Because of the magician’s code I won’t give away any how the professor was able to carry out his tricks as he is a member of the Magic Circle. Torn and restored card trick […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Tuesday 22nd July Dr Behrang Noohi Cryptography – Lecture Secure Communication How can one send a secret message? Steganography vs. Cryptography; Kerckhoff Principle Steganography is the art or practice of concealing a message, image, or file within another message, image, or file. The word steganography combines the Ancient Greek words steganos, meaning “covered, concealed, or […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Tuesday 22nd July Dr Rosemary Harris From Applied Maths to Transport Modelling (via non-equilibrium statistical mechanics) Transport processes Traffic, ants and molecular motors http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/08/traffic-radio-service-cut http://lakecountynature.com/2013/06/18/ant-parade/ http://www.ruben-group.de/home.html Stochastic Markovian dynamics In probability theory and statistics, a Markov process or Markoff process, named after the Russian mathematician Andrey Markov, is a stochastic process that satisfies the Markov […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Tuesday 22nd July Networks Dr Mark Walters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory In mathematics, percolation theory describes the behaviour of connected clusters in a random graph. The above image shows a three-dimensional site percolation graph. Consider the two dimensional graph below showing islands in a river connected by bridges. Imagine that each bridge has a half chance of getting […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Tuesday 22nd July Latin Squares and related combinatorial designs Professor L H Soicher Recreational maths can lead to lots of different applications. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku Sudoku (originally called Number Place, is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9 × 9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Monday 21st July Hyper-complex numbers Dr Alex Fink but why stop there? Mind your is and js and ks What happens when you go beyond complex numbers? Answer: Going further means sacrificing some properties of numbers such as A complex number is a number that can be expressed in the form a + bi, where […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

Monday 21st July Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors Dr Robert Johnson This is a subject that students find very difficult to get motivated with. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalues_and_eigenvectors http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E63wnzYHYc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4N8vJpf7hM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdsV0RaC9jM http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/23312/what-is-the-importance-of-eigenvalues-eigenvectors http://anothermathgeek.hubpages.com/hub/What-the-Heck-are-Eigenvalues-and-Eigenvectors An eigenvalue is a number that is derived from a square matrix. A square matrix is itself just a collection of n rows of n numbers. An […]

Goldsmiths’ 2014 Mathematics

http://www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk/charity-education/education/science-for-society-courses/mathematics/ Monday 21st July Introduction This course took place in the mathematical sciences building of Queen Mary University of London. It looked at the mathematics behind applications as diverse as cryptography, drug testing and the internet. The course included a mix of lectures and workshops, with an introduction to mathematical computing using the Maple package […]