A shard of smooth bone etched with irregular marks dating back 20,000 years puzzled archaeologists until they noticed something unique – the etchings, lines like tally marks, may have represented prime numbers. Similarly, a clay tablet from 1800 B.C.E. inscribed with Babylonian numbers describes a number system built on prime numbers. As the Ishango bone, the Plimpton 322 […] … learn more→
Blog Archives
Prime numbers, the building blocks of mathematics, have fascinated for centuries − now technology is revolutionizing the search for them
The right place to write
I am a little late this week. That’s because Monday’ s welcome but quite heavy rain caused a power outage. Not the neighbourhood or even the street. A quite small power outage confined to one part of our house. We could still use the kitchen and we had the tele and lights so it wasn’t […] … learn more→
Feedback on academic writing
Research suggests that doctoral researchers often don’t understand supervisor feedback on their writing. When they get their text back with its red/blue tracked changes and comments, they don’t always get what they are being asked to do. I remember that a doctoral researcher once told me that she had spent hours trying to work out what […] … learn more→
Writing creatively for work or study
Many of us compartmentalise different types of writing. Creative writing is for novelists, poets, playwrights, and so on. Research writing is done by people who are not creative writers. It consists of monographs, journal articles, book chapters, reports, and so on. Then there are a bunch of research tasks we don’t really think of as […] … learn more→
Flow and linking, it’s a set up
Two comments that supervisors often write on doctoral texts are (1) “add link” and (2) lacks flow”. But what do these comments actually mean? In this post I’m going to provide a couple of very basic pointers to flow and linking for any reader who isn’t sure what these terms are about. I’m not going […] … learn more→
Basic research advances science, and can also have broader impacts on modern society
It might seem surprising, but federal research funding isn’t just for scientists. A component of many federal grants that support basic research requires that discoveries be shared with nonscientists. This component, referred to as “broader impacts” by the National Science Foundation, can make a big difference for K-12 students and teachers, museumgoers, citizen scientists and other people […] … learn more→
Get a grip on big and little research problems
We very often start out on a research project with a BIG question. Or a big problem or puzzle. Why do people think that there is no climate crisis? Why are universities not funded properly? How can we cope with increasingly turbulent weather? How can we ethically use AI in teaching? You get the idea. Add […] … learn more→
How does consciousness work? Duelling scientists tested two big theories but found no winner
“Theories are like toothbrushes,” it’s sometimes said. “Everybody has their own and nobody wants to use anybody else’s.” It’s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness – the question of how we have a subjective experience of anything at all – it’s not too far from the truth. In 2022, British neuroscientist […] … learn more→
Concluding well: writing a plausible So What
Writing a paper or setting up a piece of research often involves a problem or a puzzle. You’ve identified something that needs to be sorted and you’re just the person to do it. At the start, problems tend to present themselves as either practical – there is something that is going on that is difficult/inequitable/could be […] … learn more→
Productive redundancy
Ever been told not to repeat yourself in your writing? Or been told that repetition is a complete academic no-no? Well, that’s not entirely true. But before I explain why, I must make a slight digression. Bear with me. It’ll come together in just a minute. It can be helpful for academic writers to consciously […] … learn more→
