Author Archives: apgoucher

Markov basket-weaving

Posted on October 24, 2012 by apgoucher

Shortly after publishing my third cipher, the second one (labyrinth) was solved by someone called Patrick. Gabriel had worked out the basis for solving the cipher ages ago, but didn’t actually do the necessary combination of brute-force frequency analysis to decipher it. I’m … Continue reading →

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Cipher 3: Chess cipher

Posted on October 23, 2012 by apgoucher

Don’t forget that the MathsJam is today, held throughout the country and indeed the world. It is suprising that no-one has yet solved the maze cipher, and only one person has managed to assemble and decipher the Jigcypher. Perhaps I … Continue reading →

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MODA: Inversion

Posted on October 21, 2012 by apgoucher

On Tuesday (23rd October) at 7:00 pm, there is a monthly MathsJam gathering. It occurs simultaneously in various areas of the country, including the Castle Inn, Cambridge. I’ve heard rumours that there is a surprise party at the event for Tom Rychlik to … Continue reading →

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Combinatorial cake

Posted on October 19, 2012 by apgoucher

Forgive me if there is a slight lapse in the frequency of CP4space postings. You can attribute it to me lying in the quintuple-intersection of the following Venn diagram: This particular arrangement of ellipses partitioning the plane into 32 connected … Continue reading →

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Surfaces

Posted on October 17, 2012 by apgoucher

Many natural objects can be modelled by startlingly simple equations. For instance, there is a sextic surface (degree-6 polynomial equation in three variables) which resembles a heart. As such, it has been nicknamed the ‘heart surface’: Now that we’re approaching … Continue reading →

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MODA: Barycentric stuff

Posted on October 15, 2012 by apgoucher

Yes, there’s another draft chapter of MODA online. Before we get to that, however, here is a picture sent in by arguably the greatest fan of cp4space: You may remember Vishal from the games of Hackenbush he played against his adversary, … Continue reading →

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Campanology

Posted on October 14, 2012 by apgoucher

It is usual, in Cambridge, to hear a plethora of bells chiming. Being within hearing range of the chapels of both Trinity and King’s college, I am greeted with clocks chiming every quarter-hour. On Sunday mornings, however, someone plays the entire full peal … Continue reading →

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Spinning around

Posted on October 12, 2012 by apgoucher

The Ready gang have been doing more experiments lately, and I ought to summarise the recent discoveries in reaction-diffusion systems. You may remember Robert Munafo’s ‘U-skate’ configuration, which propagates through space even when bombarded with radiation: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sir7yMLvIo] Well, lately Tim Hutton … Continue reading →

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Projective polyhedra

Posted on October 11, 2012 by apgoucher

The Platonic solids can be regarded as regular tilings of the surface of a sphere in much the same way as the square, hexagonal and triangular tilings of the plane are regular. For example, the dodecahedron is a tiling of … Continue reading →

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Antikythera revisited

Posted on October 8, 2012 by apgoucher

Emma McCaughan notified me that topic of the 2012 Larmor Lecture organised by the Cambridge Philosophical Society is the Antikythera mechanism. It takes place at 5:30 pm today (Monday 8th October) in the Bristol-Myers Squibb lecture theatre, located on Lensfield … Continue reading →

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