Phys .org: Mathematical curves predict evolution in COVID-19 spread. “Efforts to contain the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic are now the top priority of governments across the globe. As they make these life-saving decisions, it is particularly crucial for policymakers to accurately predict how the spread of the virus will change over time. Through research published in EPJ Plus, Ignazio Ciufolini at the University of Salento, and Antonio Paolozzi at Sapienza University of Rome, identify a clear mathematical trend in the evolution of daily new cases and death numbers in China, and use the same curve to predict how a similar slowdown will unfold in Italy.”
mathematics
North Carolina State University: Free Math Mapper Tool Helps Parents, Teachers Advance Mathematical Learning for Middle Grades Students at Home During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic
North Carolina State University: Free Math Mapper Tool Helps Parents, Teachers Advance Mathematical Learning for Middle Grades Students at Home During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic . “As schools in North Carolina have moved toward remote learning to slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), Jere Confrey, Ph.D., Joseph D. Moore Distinguished Professor of mathematics education at the NC State College of Education, and the Scaling Up Digital Design Studies (SUDDS) team are offering an online mathematics diagnostic tool for free to the public. The Math Mapper tool offers free diagnostic practice problems and assessments designed to evaluate middle school students’ mathematical progress on learning trajectories to determine what students know and what they still need to learn.”
CU Boulder Today: Mathematician using Facebook data in the fight against COVID-19
CU Boulder Today: Mathematician using Facebook data in the fight against COVID-19. “CU Boulder researcher Daniel Larremore has never held a nasal swab and doesn’t wear scrubs. Instead, he relies on math to track the spread of human diseases. This week, Larremore and several colleagues from Colorado joined a nationwide study that seeks to use social media data to better understand how coronavirus cases might grow and travel in the coming weeks. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network will draw on huge volumes of anonymized location information supplied by Facebook to follow how groups of people move from spot to spot over time. That will allow researchers like Larremore, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and in the BioFrontiers Institute, to build maps that show where people are still traveling in the age of social distancing.”
Extremely cool teacher runs math lesson from home within ‘Half Life: Alyx’ (Mashable)
Mashable: Extremely cool teacher runs math lesson from home within ‘Half Life: Alyx’. “Extremely cool teacher Charles Coomber —who works for California’s Springs Charter schools, at the Otay Ranch Academy for the Arts — taught a lesson in angle vocabulary from his apartment set within the long-awaited new virtual reality first-person shooter from developer Valve. Half Life: Alyx dropped on Monday, years after the iconic original game was released in 1998, and its sequel in 2006.”
The Conversation: How to flatten the curve of coronavirus, a mathematician explains
The Conversation: How to flatten the curve of coronavirus, a mathematician explains. “This general concept of slowing the virus’s spread has been termed “flattening the curve” by epidemiologists – experts who study how often diseases occur in different populations, and why. The term has become widespread on social media as the public is encouraged to practise ‘social distancing’. But how does social distancing help to flatten the curve? We can explain by referring to what mathematicians call ‘exponential growth’.
Wolfram Blog: 15 Ways Wolfram|Alpha Can Help with Your Classes
Wolfram Blog: 15 Ways Wolfram|Alpha Can Help with Your Classes. “Thinking back on those late-night study sessions, I would have saved a lot of time if I had properly used Wolfram|Alpha as a study tool. Because I was a biology major, many of the areas in which I most frequently sought information were related to scientific fields such as chemistry, but Wolfram|Alpha can be a valuable resource in so many more areas. Here are 15 applications of Wolfram|Alpha in topics beyond mathematics. I hope you will find these to be useful both inside and outside the classroom!”
University of Sydney: How a first edition of Principia with Isaac Newton’s notes got to Sydney
New-to-me, from the University of Sydney: How a first edition of Principia with Isaac Newton’s notes got to Sydney. “While the original print run is estimated at between 250 and 400 copies, there are only 189 surviving first editions in the world and only four with annotations by the English mathematician himself. Of these four copies, the Sydney copy of Principia is the only one in the Southern Hemisphere and is held in the Rare Books & Special Collections at the University of Sydney library…. The University of Sydney copy of Principia has been digitised and is available online alongside other digital resources via the University’s digital collection.”
