>> 14.02.06

arbitrary constant — relaunched
Whilst the PhD Diary languishes unfinished, the main arbitrary constant site has been given a fresh lick of paint and relaunched. If anybody visiting the PhD Diary is interested in film, literature, politics, photography and other things besides, then, please visit arbitrary constant.... {>>}

>> 31.03.05

Sup(p)er work, Dr Ben
It's hard, you know, and this diary has occasionally hinted at how hard it can be. Postgraduate study, that is, not being a celebrity. It's not rocket science. Though — on occasion — it can be. I've decided to bail and feel much better for it, but plenty of people soldier on, sacrificing a great deal, including their sanity, their friends, their ability to communicate, their ability to sleep, their ability to do anything but work, their ability to eat, their ability to earn a decent wage, their ability to... {>>}

>> 27.09.04

Maths on the radio
Whilst the annual report continues to demand my attention and thus prevent further PhD developments in the diary, another off-topic entry will suffice to keep things ticking over. It seems that the BBC's Radio 4 is paying more attention to mathematics of late for on several occasions I have been listening and a mathematically slanted programme has been aired. The most recent programmes have been part of the five shapes series, an interesting look at shapes, topology, maths and their place in the world around us. I'd thoroughly recommend them... {>>}

>> 24.09.04

Redesign doesn't affect work "shock"
Having planned a redesign for arbitrary constant for some time now, a concerted effort has seen the change finally take place. Not strictly anything to do with the PhD, I'll admit, although it may be easy to assume that in order to complete the redesign I have neglected the pressing issue of my annual report. Although your concerns are appreciated, this has not been the case. The annual report is virtually finished, aside from a few paragraphs of the introduction (which doubles up as the literature review). In fact, the... {>>}

>> 09.09.04

Recent maths news
I know I wrote recently about the Clay Institute Millennium Prize hoo-ha because I was moaning about something or other to do with it, or how journalists write about it, to be more precise. Well, news was delivered this week on progress made in two of the seven million-dollar questions: the Riemann hypothesis and the Poincare conjecture and it unfortunately proves the point I was trying to make. If you would like a short summary of my point, it is here; if you would like a short summary of whether... {>>}

>> 08.09.04

The end of the Genesis mission
As if enduring an incomprehensibly poor movie isn't enough, I've just read of some news that, though not the end of the world, is slightly upsetting in a mathematical sense. A capsule from the Genesis probe has unfortunately crashed to earth this afternoon and with it one of the most exciting space recaptures to have been conceived. The Genesis mission was designed to collect particles of the solar wind for study in the scientific community and was an important mission for a great many people. Although some of the capsules... {>>}

>> 06.09.04

Too many happy returns
As a postgraduate student, you know that the new academic year has started because: i) you have to queue for 25 minutes to get cash from a cash machine ii) the cash machines have run out of money iii) the people behind and in front of you are asking each other if they had a nice holiday and what their house is like and how far from campus it is iv) you have to queue for 20 minutes to buy your breakfast in a restaurant that is no longer tidy... {>>}

>> 01.09.04

Further applicability of maths
Yesterday's entry, on second reading, seemed a little bit self-satisfied, an overdue vindication that maths can actually be useful and therefore a call to the world that here is some proof that maths is useful. I'd love to say that I won't do it again but my entry title for today has already given the game away. Reading through the literature for the review I am currently undertaking, I came across this short paper: Lie Group Analysis Applied to a HIV Transmission Model. The subject of AIDS and HIV is... {>>}

>> 30.08.04

Prominent mathematics
Reading through the Sunday newspapers, an article in the Independent on Sunday gave prominence to the finding of an 18th century church minister and mathematician. (Robert) Thomas Malthus hypothesised that unchecked population growth would see demand for subsistence would far outstrip food production capabilities in his essay, On Population (1798). Recent research has shown that this is indeed the case:"The world is consistently failing to grow enough crops to feed itself, alarming official statistics show... The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) latest report on global food production says that... {>>}

>> 05.08.04

They are always boffins
A wonderful article on the BBC news website has combined the two things I have a deep-seated interest in: film and maths. Researchers at King's College London have apparently devised a formula that takes into account all those factors that make something scary and puts them together in such a way that will tell you how scary a film is. Apparently, The Shining is the scariest movie ever. The first thing to note about this is that the formula is a complete nonsense; then again what would you expect. As... {>>}

>> 29.07.04

"You're a right strophoid"
A curious characteristic of academic departments is their tendency to put up strange posters to try and make the department look a bit more interesting, whilst at the same time discussing subject areas of the appropriate discipline and trying to make them seem as if they have something to do with the real world. (Taking this logic one step further, the University of Surrey has as its catchphrase "Understanding the Real World", which seems to me to put a clear distance between what universities are supposed to be and what... {>>}

>> 26.07.04

School barbecue
That the last few entries to the PhD diary have been filed in the "off-topic" category should tell you something about the mathematics I am concentrating on at the moment: it doesn't make for interesting reading. Actually, that is not true, for it does make for interesting reading: it's just that I haven't been keeping a worhtwhile track of it here for the last few months and so am putting off what will prove to be quite a task in bringing things up to dats mathematically speaking. Hence the dependence... {>>}

>> 22.07.04

Popular maths
Having been sure I had talked about the Clay Institute's Millennium prize before, I was slightly bemused to find no reference to it in this diary. Never mind, for an article in the latest edition of the London Review of Books talks about it for me. Or rather, it does what all maths (and science, for that matter) popularisation seems to do of late: talk about it in such a way as to make the talking about it as close to pointless as a line. Thus, the deliberate lack of... {>>}

>> 21.06.04

Being 8 again
It seems as though all I am doing lately on here is apologising - it's just like being 8 years old again and having to go around to the next-door neighbour's house to say sorry for riding my bike too quickly on the pavement. In no particular order, then, I am sorry for: i) not keeping this diary up to date ii) not deleting comments that are inappropriate that always appear no matter how hard you try iii) not finding the time to install the MT blacklist or closing comments... {>>}

>> 11.05.04

Improbable research
If proper research is getting you down — and there are plenty of reasons why that could be the case — then why not give thought to some improbable research? Following the link from an article in the education section of the Guardian brought me to The Annals of Improbable Research, a periodical that gave birth to the Ig Nobel Prizes. There is a blog documenting all the madness and, once you get used to it, the whole site proves to be an enjoyable read. Strange, though, nonetheless.... {>>}

>> 07.05.04

Some humour for a Friday afternoon
It has been a long day of hard work so far, so to relieve some of the demands on my brain this afternoon, I thought I would bring a bit of humour to the diary with some of those dodgy/occasionally funny things you find on the wall in maths departments, as well as some PhD-based humour. First of all, why not play the PhD game? (You are asked why you started a PhD. Miss a turn finding a reason...). If comic strips are more your thing, then why not look... {>>}