Massively Multiplayer Mathematics

Although theorems are frequently named after a single person, most progress in mathematics is the result of a group effort. Recently several difficult problems in mathematics have been attacked by a collective of mathematicians that have communicated through online blogs. The immediacy of this mode of communication allowed the first proposed problem to be cracked in a surprisingly short time. Will this remain an isolated approach, or can we expect that hard mathematical problems will be regularly crowdsourced in the future?

Crawford prize winners revisited: Dwight Barkley

The Crawford prize is awarded biannually since 2001 at the `Snowbird' conferences by the SIAM activity group on dynamical systems for recent outstanding work on a topic in nonlinear science. In a series of articles we invite the winners to write about their mathematical biography, their work, and what they consider important problems in the field of applied dynamical system. This article is the contribution of the Dwight Barkley, the prize winner from 2005.

Reactions to The end of theory?

In the January, 2011 issue of DSWeb, Krešo Josić discussed claims that software is able to autonomously generate scientific theories in The end of theory?.
Tony Harkin and Siemion Faitlowicz commented.

Books available for review

We have twenty books in stock (on the shelf of our book reviews editor) ready to be sent for your review. If you would like to review one or more of these titles, please send an e-mail to the book reviews editor. We will send you a complimentary copy.

We are sad to announce that Charles Morgan, editor of the Book Reviews section, has to resign in order to tend to his duties as the Department Chair of Mathematics at Lock Haven University. We thank him for his valuable contribution to the magazine. Also, we invite expressions of interest to take over from him. Please contact Jens Rademacher with inquiries.

Edelspam

This week we celebrate the 33rd birthday of spam. According to leaders in the industry virus protection and email filtering, over 90% of email traffic is taken up by spam these days. Over 99% of this 90% is no more than annoying, but there is a small portion that targets us, applied mathematicians...