Everything we buy, from books to baked beans, has a product code printed on it. More sophisticated check-digit codes exist on official documents, bank notes and air tickets. What are they for and what do they mean? We take a look at the mathematical structure of these codes and explain their purposes. And in this age of boundless surveillance, are there enough numbers for each of us to have a serial number of our own?
Talk given by Professor John D Barrow FRS
Tagged with codebreaking mathematics gresham college john barrow
From http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=108&EventId=1037 Speaker(s): Professor John D Barrow FRS Date/Time: 05/10/2010, 1pm Venue: Museum of London
How pictures have been used in mathematics. The use of illustrations in ancient mathematics books, the invention of the first graphs and the representation of probabilities, sets and formulae by pictures. We look at the role played by computers in exploring and displaying the behaviour of extremely large and complicated problems. This has changed the culture of applied mathematics and science and influences the way research is done and the forms in which it is presented.
Download Files lecture notes (Powerpoint, 13.4 MB) audio file (58.9MB) Video file (242MB)
Tagged with maths gresham 2010-10-05 john-d-barrow
A lecture to mark the publication of Robin Wilson and Raymond Flood’s new book. Mathematics pervades our daily lives. Our credit cards and the nation’s defence are kept secure largely due to the properties of prime numbers, and mathematics is intimately involved whenever we fly in an aeroplane, predict the weather or analyse data. But what mathematics is involved, and who first introduced it? Raymond Flood and Robin Wilson describe some interesting mathematicians’ contributions.
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-great-mathematicians