The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2012 Crafoord Prize to Jean Bourgain (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA) and Terence Tao (U.C. Los Angeles) “for their brilliant and groundbreaking work in harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, ergodic theory, number theory, combinatorics, functional analysis and theoretical computer science”.
As the Crafoord Prize website explains,
This year´s Crafoord Prize Laureates have solved an impressive number of important problems in mathematics. Their deep mathematical erudition and exceptional problem-solving ability have enabled them to discover many new and fruitful connections and to make fundamental contributions to current research in several
Continue reading Jean Bourgain and Terence Tao receive Crafoord Prize in mathematics
One would surely think that first-world nations, in a bid to retain leadership in science and technology, and to fend off the very real challenge of the “Asian tigers” (India, China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan), would pull all stops to ensure that university students in mathematics, computer science and related fields obtain the very best education possible.
To a certain extent, this has been done with relatively more funding in these fields (particularly computer science) from national sources, compared with many other academic disciplines. Yet there are storm clouds ahead.
For instance, in the U.S., leading computer science departments, stung by
Continue reading Poor-quality math and computer science courses threaten technological leadership
[Note: A condensed and revised version of this article was published here in The Conversation, an online forum of academic research headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.]
Introduction
What do iPhones, Twitter, Netflix, cleaner cities, safer cars, state-of-the-art environmental management and modern medical diagnostics have in common? They all are made possible by Moore’s Law.
Moore’s Law stems from a seminal 1965 article by Intel founder Gordon Moore. He wrote
The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year. … Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue,
Continue reading Moore’s Law and the future of science and mathematics
[Note: A condensed and revised version of this article was published here in The Conversation, an online forum of academic research headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.]
Assessing risk is something everyone must do every day. Yet few are very good at it, and there are significant consequences to the public’s collective inability to accurately assess risk.
As a first and very important example, most people presume, as an indisputable fact, that the past century has been the most violent in all history — two devastating world wars, the Holocaust, the Rawanda massacre, the September 11 attacks and more — and that
Continue reading Innumeracy and public risk
In two articles [BaiBor2011a; BaiBor2011b], two earlier blog posts [BlogA; BlogB] and a Conversation piece, we have examined the discovery and development of our modern system of decimal arithmetic with zero, which discovery we believe to be among the greatest of all historical mathematical achievements. It is certainly nontrivial, as evidenced by the fact that it escaped even Archimedes, that extraordinary genius of the ~300 BCE Greek culture who anticipated much of modern mathematics, including numerical analysis and calculus. And the impact of this ingenious discovery in our modern computer-oriented society cannot be overstated.
One key aspect of this history
Continue reading That mysterious but important number zero
In response to the use of citation data in research assessments such as Excellence in Research for Australia, the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) are considering producing a mathematics journal rating system to mitigate the exploitation of commercial or national rating methods, see also the 2008 citations report and the 2010 best practice report. They write:
In implementation of Resolution 18 adopted by the IMU General Assembly in 2010: “The General Assembly of the IMU asks the EC to create, in cooperation with ICIAM, a Working Group that is charged with
Continue reading Proposed mathematical journal rating system
[Note: A condensed and revised version of this article was published here in The Conversation, an online forum of academic research headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.]
From time to time, the scientific community is rocked with cases of scientific fraud. Needless to say, such incidents do not help instill confidence in the public mind that is already predisposed to be skeptical of inconvenient scientific findings, including biological evolution and global warming.
One notable case of fraud came to light in 2002, when Bell Labs researcher Hendrik Schon, once described as a “rising star” in the field of nanoelectronics, was accused of
Continue reading Mathematics and scientific fraud
An article entitled “Exploratory Experimentation and Computation,” authored by the present bloggers, has appeared in the November 2011 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. The full PDF of the article is available Here. The article has been highlighted in a number of press reports, including: LBNL News, Science Daily, Eurekalert, Physorg, Newswise, and Others.
Here is an excerpt from the LBNL News report:
A common misperception is that mathematicians’ work consists entirely of calculations. If that were true, computers would have replaced mathematicians long ago. What mathematicians actually do is to discover and investigate patterns—patterns that arise
Continue reading “Exploratory Experimentation and Computation” published in AMS Notices
[Note: A condensed and revised version of this article was published here in The Conversation, an online forum of academic research headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.]
Introduction
Many of us know that the sun is approximately 150 million km or 93 million miles away, a distance that is known as the “astronomical unit” (AU). Neptune, the most distant planet, is 30 AU from the sun, or some 44.8 billion km (27.9 billion mi). The Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977, reached Jupiter just two years later, but did not reach Neptune until 1989.
The nearest stars, Alpha Centauri A-B and Proxima
Continue reading How far away is everybody?
Professor Jonathan M. Borwein delivered the keynote talk Teaching and Researching with Collaboration Tools and Technology as part of the 2011 Australian Learning and Teaching Council workshop, “Effective Teaching, Effective Learning in the Quantitative Disciplines,” held 29-30 Sep 2011 at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. This practical, hands-on and interactive workshop immediately followed the Australian Mathematical Society 55th Annual Meeting at the University of Wollongong (26-29 September, 2011). It has been designed specifically for lecturers and tutors teaching in the quantitative disciplines.
Additional details can be found at ALTC Workshop website.
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