h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

By special request - but I was going to post about this anyway.

Have just checked my journal entries and I see that it's true there has been no mention of Pudding Seminars for quite some time. I'm sure I went to one or two last term, but perhaps they weren't sufficiently memorable? Looking at the list on the College website, I now remember that I went to one on Montesquieu's 'lost' manuscripts, which I did find extremely interesting, but I must have forgotten to post about it.

*Anyway* ... yesterday's talk was given by the Director of Studies in Mathematics, and was about Pascal's Arithmetical Triangle (and how it is useful to football managers and greengrocers). I had actually heard a version of the talk before, at the opening of an exhibition in the College library, the centrepiece of which was a 19th-century cast of Pascal's deathmask. Anyway, the Maths DoS is a good speaker, very clear and entertaining, and he had piles of satsumas, arranged according to the principles of said triangle, as props for his talk. The connection with football was about picking teams from a given number of potential players - in case anybody is interested.

Today I had the opportunity to hear him again - this time on the subject of the Maths Tripos at Cambridge - as it was our Maths Open Day. The Maths Faculty runs two Open Afternoons, on consecutive Saturdays, and Colleges are invited to participate with morning sessions on one of the two dates. We only joined in three years ago, and the first year only had 9 visitors: this went up to 50 last year, and 42 this year. The event seems to have a much lower 'no-show' rate than the rest of our Open Days, when we can usually expect that about 10% of those who've booked will not turn up. We also seem to get more takers than any of the other participating colleges - no idea why this should be. Unfortunately, last year this did not translate into lots of applications (only 2 of those who came to the Open Day applied to the college). We have no way of knowing how many came to visit and then applied to other colleges.

It was a lovely sunny morning and the gardens were looking great. My duties ended just after lunch, and I came back through town to do a bit of shopping in the market. Town was heaving. Saturdays in the centre are a nightmare, particularly in summer when the usual shopping crowds are augmented by tourists.

And for anyone who wonders what Cambridge undergrads do in their spare time, here's one of ours (think she was at school in Aiberdeen, btw):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bq0kZPk5MZg

Don't think I'm invading her privacy, as she posted the link herself on Facebook.

Ah thank you Annie! - loved Pascal's Triangle at school: all those simple patterns adding up to beauty.

It's funny, I read the title of this thread as Partying with Pascal