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 greshamcollege johnbarrow 2010
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
The man who calculated as other men breathe. Professor Marcus du Sautoy on the mathematical omnivore without whom no history of mathematics is complete.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss random and pseudorandom numbers. Randomness will be familiar to anybody who’s bought a lottery ticket or shuffled a pack of cards. But there’s also a phenomenon known as pseudo-randomness –numbers which look random but aren’t. So why are these numbers useful and how can they be generated? Melvyn is joined by Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford; Colva Roney-Dougal, Senior Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews; and Timothy Gowers, Royal Society Research Professor in Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
Tagged with random mathematics