Events of 2020–2021
You can find code and other resources related to previous talks here .
March 12 2020: (Babylonian) π-day seminar
Bert Mortier — The history of mathematics from π's perspective
After a triangle and a square, the next figure humans are prone to draw in the sand is a circle. This prompts questions about its area and circumference, and establishes π as a protagonist in the history of mathematics. With the awkward Egyptian numerals, any calculation with rationals is already cumbersome, let alone when circles are involved. The markedly more efficient Babylonian numbers do allow convenient calculations, but their treatment of circles mostly boils down to using π=3. After the Greeks established mathematics, and discovered irrationality and rigorous proofs, some of the concepts became available to find out what π could entail. π's nature remains a mystery nonetheless, even long after the collapse of the Greek schools of thought, as evidenced by the continued efforts of 'squaring the circle'. It will take until 1761 to finally prove π's long expected irrationality and only in 1882 squaring the circle was proven impossible, obviating the work done by a myriad of geniuses for over 2000 years.
Giovanni Samaey — Humble Pi: Hilarious (and sometimes tragic) mathematical errors, and what they teach us about research practice.
Two books have appeared quite recently about mathematical and computing errors. "Bits and Bugs", by Thomas Huckle and Tobias Neckel, which was already featured in a NUMA seminar by Thomas Huckle last year, and "Humble Pi: a comedy of maths errors" by Matt Parker. In this seminar, I will go through a small subset of surprising mathematical errors that have turned up in the wild, and relate them to our daily research practice. The goal of the talk is to be as entertaining as possible, and I guarantee that there will be stories you don't know yet. Simultaneously, I will use these anecdotes to provoke some afterthoughts on how to test mathematical ideas and scientific software, and what it matters how you manage your own research data.