Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By James Nicholson
Statistics to me has always been about trying to make the best sense of incomplete information and having some feeling for how good that ‘best sense’ is. At a very crude level if you have a firm employing 235 people and you randomly sample 200 of these on some topic, I would feel my information was pretty good (even though it is incomplete).
In July, the first issue of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology (JSSAM) will come out. The launch of a new journal is always a source of great anticipation in the academic publishing world. We face many concerns about a proliferation of unnecessary journals, reduced library budgets, and creating valuable publications in a digital world.
By Andrew Gelman
There’s a prevailing notion that communicating science is difficult, and it is therefore difficult to engage the general public. People can be fazed by statistics in particular, so how can we convey the importance of this science effectively?
By Ian Stewart
Symmetry has been recognised in art for millennia as a form of visual harmony and balance, but it has now become one of the great unifying principles of mathematics. A precise mathematical concept of symmetry emerged in the nineteenth century, as an unexpected side-effect of research into algebraic equations. Since then it has developed into a huge area of mathematics, with applications throughout the sciences.
By Lara Alcock
Two contrasting experiences stick in mind from my first year at university. First, I spent a lot of time in lectures that I did not understand. I don’t mean lectures in which I got the general gist but didn’t quite follow the technical details. I mean lectures in which I understood not one thing from the beginning to the end. I still went to all the lectures and wrote everything down – I was a dutiful sort of student – but this was hardly the ideal learning experience…
By Marjorie Senechal
In the heyday of the British Empire, Britain’s second most-widely-read book, after the Bible, was: (a) Richard III (b) Robinson Crusoe (c) The Elements (d) Beowulf ? Why do I ask? “Since late medieval or early modern time,” Michael Walzer writes in Exodus and Revolution, “there has existed in the West a characteristic way of thinking about political change, a pattern that we commonly impose upon events, a story that we repeat to one another.”
By Anany Levitin
In the last few years algorithmic thinking has become somewhat of a buzz word among computer science educators, and with some justice: ubiquity of computers in today’s world does make algorithmic thinking a very important skill for almost any student. There are few colleges and universities that require non-computer science majors to take a course exposing them to important issues and methods of algorithmic problem solving.
By Jason Rosenhouse
Writing in 1866, the British mathematician John Venn wrote, in reference to the branch of mathematics known as probability theory, “To many persons the mention of Probability suggests little else than the notion of a set of rules, very ingenious and profound rules no doubt, with which mathematicians amuse themselves by setting and solving puzzles.” I suspect many of my students would extend Venn’s quip to the entirety of mathematics.
By Robyn Arianrhod
This year, 2012, marks the 325th anniversary of the first publication of the legendary Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), the 500-page book in which Sir Isaac Newton presented the world with his theory of gravity. It was the first comprehensive scientific theory in history, and it’s withstood the test of time over the past three centuries.
By Robyn Arianrhod
29 November 2012 is the 140th anniversary of the death of mathematician Mary Somerville, the nineteenth century’s “Queen of Science”. Several years after her death, Oxford University’s Somerville College was named in her honor — a poignant tribute because Mary Somerville had been completely self-taught. In 1868, when she was 87, she had signed J. S. Mill’s (unsuccessful) petition for female suffrage, but I think she’d be astonished that we’re still debating “the woman question” in science.
Three words to sum up Alan Turing? Humour. He had an impish, irreverent and infectious sense of humour. Courage. Isolation. He loved to work alone. Reading his scientific papers, it is almost as though the rest of the world — the busy community of human minds working away on the same or related problems — simply did not exist.
By Benjamin Wardhaugh
As well as Halloween, Guy Fawkes, and All Saints’s day, this time of the year used to see another day of fun and frenzy. ‘Almanack Day’, towards the end of November, saw the next year’s almanacs go on sale. It generally came round on or about 22 November: St Cecilia’s Day. In London, Stationers’ Hall would be crammed to the rafters…
By Joseph C. McMurray
An interesting, if somewhat uncommon, lens through which to view politics is that of mathematics. One of the strongest arguments ever made in favor of democracy, for example, was in 1785 by the political philosopher-mathematician, Nicolas de Condorcet.
By Jason Rosenhouse
In more than a decade of socializing with creationists and other religious fundamentalists, I frequently encountered blinkered arguments about mathematics. This attack on set theory, however, was new to me. I cannot even imagine why anyone would think set theory is relevant to discussions of whether it is man or God who creates math. Perhaps the problem is that set theorists often speak a bit casually about infinity, which some people think is tantamount to discussing God. Alas, this line of criticism is too blinkered to take seriously.
By David Acheson
I’ve just had a great time at the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival, even though it was a rather strange experience for a mathematician. In the Author’s Yurt (sic), for example, I was surrounded by fiction writers, with lots of pointy beards and wild hair. As it happens, I used to write detective stories when I was a young boy, so once had vague dreams of becoming a fiction writer myself.
By Kees van Deemter
Alan Turing’s work was so important and wide-ranging that it is difficult to think of a more broadly influential scientist in the last century. Our understanding of the power and limitations of computing, for example, owes a tremendous amount to his work on the mathematical concept of a Turing Machine. His practical achievements are no less impressive. Some historians believe that the Second World War would have ended differently without his contributions to code-breaking. Yet another part of his work is the Turing test.