BSc in Discrete Mathematics, University of Warwick

05/07/2017

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinknudson/2017/06/26/there-are-only-15-pentagonal-tilings-probably/

Have all the pentagonal tilings of the plane been found? Perhaps.

13/02/2017

A good reminder: make sure to optimise what you want to optimise. A shortest path does not always result in the lowest cost.

The shortest trip isn't always the best trip for your gas mileage.

22/10/2016

Two-year project maps shortest possible journey to visit 25,000 pubs

18/10/2016

Two young computer scientists have figured out how to fairly divide cake among any number of people

01/08/2016

https://medium.com//habits-of-highly-mathematical-people-b719df12d15e #.h9ogzmj4p

The most common question students have about mathematics is “when will I ever use this?” Many math teachers would probably struggle to give…

19/06/2016

"A country is better off if its workers are decently paid, do not work excessively long hours, and work in a safe environment. (If this is not a high priority for you, that just means that you will need other examples to illustrate the abstract principle.)"

To avoid race to bottom on workers’ rights, climate change or destructive tax competition, countries need to cooperate, writes Tim Gowers.

14/06/2016

"DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY lets you gain insights from large datasets, but with a mathematical proof that no one can learn about a single individual."

"Differential privacy, Roth explains, seeks to MATHEMATICALLY PROVE that a certain form of data analysis can’t reveal anything about an individual—that the output of an algorithm remains identical with and without the input containing any given person’s private data. “You might do something more clever than the people before to anonymize your data set, but someone more clever than you might come around tomorrow and de-anonymize it,” says Roth. “Differential privacy, because it has a provable guarantee, breaks that loop. It’s FUTURE PROOF.”"

"As an example of [NOISE INJECTION], Microsoft’s Dwork points to the technique in which a survey asks if the respondent has ever, say, broken a law. But first, the survey asks them to flip a coin. If the result is tails, they should answer honestly. If the result is heads, they’re instructed to flip the coin again and then answer “yes” for heads or “no” for tails. The resulting RANDOM NOISE CAN BE SUBTRACTED from the results WITH A BIT OF ALGEBRA, and every respondent is protected from punishment if they admitted to lawbreaking."

"Whether Apple is using differential privacy techniques with the RIGOUR necessary to fully protect its customers’ privacy, of course, is another question."

At WWDC, Apple name-checked the statistical science of learning as much as possible about a group while learning as little as possible about any individual in it.

07/02/2016

http://www.mersenne.org/primes/?press=M74207281

GIMPS has discovered a new Mersenne prime number: 2^74207281-1 is prime! Discovered: 2016 Jan 07

07/10/2015

Just in case anyone missed BBC's latest episode by Marcus du Sautoy. Algorithms shown through impressive visuals and people's stories, all in du Sautoy's inimitable style.
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p030s6b3/the-secret-rules-of-modern-living-algorithms

Marcus du Sautoy demystifies the hidden world of algorithms.

21/08/2015

A cool result and a nice undergraduate project for one of the trio. (The Guardian article is also well-written, as long as you ignore the title...) http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/aug/10/attack-on-the-pentagon-results-in-discovery-of-new-mathematical-tile

Joy as mathematicians discover a new type of pentagon that can cover the plane leaving no gaps and with no overlaps. It becomes only the 15th type of pentagon known that can do this, and the first discovered in 30 years

14/07/2015

"A short game sheds light on government policy, corporate America and why no one likes to be wrong."

This also happens to be an important lesson for anybody doing scientific work.