CFI EVENT: The Magic of Maths. Sat 2nd April

Centre for Inquiry UK, the British Humanist Association and Conway Hall Ethical Society present The Magic of Maths: find out about the uniquely beautiful patterns hidden in Pascal's triangle; about our (often poor) intuitive understanding of probability and the risk of events governing our lives; and about the greatest unsolved puzzles in maths!
Join us at Conway Hall – the world's oldest Ethical Society – for a fascinating day of magical maths, uncovering some of the incredible ways numbers and patterns are woven through nature and our everyday lives.
Programme
11:00–12:00 | Maths' greatest unsolved puzzles, with Katie Steckles
While mathematicians are undoubtedly brilliant, and their work is used in all kinds of amazing scientific and technological discoveries, there are still questions they can't answer. Every mathematical question is a puzzle to be solved, and while there'll be plenty of puzzles for you to chew on, we'll also discuss some of the questions that still leave mathematicians stumped - from simple-sounding number and shape problems to some truly mind-bending fundamental questions.
12:15–13:15 | Pascal's Patterns, with Professor Emma McCoy
Pascal’s triangle is named after the 17th century French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Professor McCoy will look at some of the beautiful patterns hidden in Pascal’s triangle and investigate why they appear. She will look at how Pascal’s triangle is related to diverse problems in mathematics, including examples from algebra, geometry and probability.
14:15–15:15 | The improbability principle returns: luck, lotteries, and Laura, with Professor David Hand
This talk takes a second look at the improbability principle, illustrating further popular misconceptions and failures of intuition regarding coincidences and unlikely events. It teases apart the contradiction between Borel’s law, which tells us that sufficiently improbable events are impossible, and the improbability principle, which tells us that highly improbable events happen all the time.
Speakers
Katie Steckles is a mathematician based in Manchester, who gives talks and workshops on different areas of maths. She finished her PhD in 2011, and since then has talked about maths in schools, at science festivals, on BBC radio, at music festivals, as part of theatre shows and on the internet. She enjoys doing puzzles, solving the Rubik's cube and baking things shaped like maths.
Emma McCoy is the Deputy Head of Department at Imperial College London. She is a member of the Statistics section with research interests in time series analysis and causal inference. She has worked at Imperial for over 20 years and has held various Departmental administrative roles, including that of Admissions Tutor. Professor McCoy is heavily involved in Outreach activities and regularly speaks at Higher Education careers fairs and school events.
David Hand is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London and Chief Scientific Advisor to Winton Capital Management. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, has served (twice) as President of the Royal Statistical Society, serves on the Board of the UK Statistics Authority, and chairs the Board of the UK’s Administrative Data Research Network. His recent book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day was published in 2014. He was made OBE for services to research and innovation in 2013.
Registration is from 10:30, for an 11:00 start.
When
April 2nd, 2016 10:30 AM through 3:30 PM
Event Fee(s)
General £ 10.00
Members and Students (members of British Humanist Association, members of Conway Hall Ethical Society) £ 5.00 BOOK HERE

Audio recording of me talking about Wittgenstein etc.

Here is me discussing Wittgenstein's private language argument, Wittgenstein on the standard metre, naturalism, evil, God, and Jeremy Corbyn! Link.

'Antisemite!', "Islamophobe!'

Interesting article here on a schoolboy interviewed by the police about terrorism because he wore a 'Free Palestine' badge.

Wear 'Free Palestine' badge = likely terrorist supporter. Pro-BDS = antisemitic. This is obviously ridiculous. Which is not to deny there are anti-semites amongst such people, of course. Similarly, some think those pointing to at least *some* significant Western responsibility for rise of Islamic terrorism = Islamism (or at least support or apologetics for it).

On the other side, suggest there's a significant problem re Islamism in the UK (and I do think that, in fact) and you will likely be deemed Islamophobic. You will also be labelled Islamophobic if you defend the right to free speech of someone like Maryam Namazie. Or if you believe Islam is a root cause of terrorist violence (which I do).

In each case, there's an attempt to stifle and silence dissent with a shaming accusation of bigotry. For of course, the one thing us lefty liberals can't bear to be accused of is bigotry. 'Anti-semite!', 'Islamophobe!' Gets us every time. We start self-censoring for fear of being thought bigoted.

What do Corbyn supporters on twitter think about Islamism and Western foreign policy?

'Corbyn and his supporters do not want us to think about Paris because they cannot accept that privileged westerners can be victims. If Isis kills them, it is their own or their governments’ fault.'  Nick Cohen. Source

Below are the results of some twitter polls I did recently. I was interested to know the attitudes of Corbyn supporters on twitter compared to the more general twitterati. I was particularly interested to know whether Nick Cohen's portrayal of Corbyn supporters was accurate.

Of course, mine is not a very scientific survey, and it should be remembered that respondents are not representative of the twitterati generally, but of those who happen to follow me (Corbynites are probably over-represented).

"Terrorism has nothing to do with Islam and is entirely the fault of the West"

Notice the following:
 
82% of Corbyn supporters rejected the view that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam and is entirely the fault of the West.

"Islamism is a significant problem in the UK"

55% of Corbyn supporters disagreed with "Islamism is a significant problem in the UK" and only 33% agreed. However, 32% of all twitterati polled disagreed and 55% agreed.

It appears it would be wrong to suggest all, or even most, Corbynites think that Islamism is not a significant problem in the UK. Indeed, a third of them are convinced Islamism is a significant problem, with another 12% unsure.

"Is terrorism to some significant degree a product of Western foreign policy?" 


Yes, 73% of Corbynites think terrorism is to some significant extent a product of Western foreign policy. However, 55% of all  twitterati polled also think that.

That terrorism is to some significant degree a product of Western foreign policy is the majority view amongst not just Corbynites but the polled twitterati more generally. In which case, pointing a finger exclusively at Corbynites on his issue seems unjustified.


Portrayals of Corbyn supporters by Nick Cohen

Nick Cohen has said the following about Corbyn supporters (I repeat that original quote):

'Corbyn and his supporters do not want us to think about Paris because they cannot accept that privileged westerners can be victims. If Isis kills them, it is their own or their governments’ fault.' Source.

'Corbyn and his comrades bring their support for the .... the women-, Jew- and gay- haters of radical Islam...'

'Corbyn, along with too much of ‘progressive opinion’, has a mistrust bordering on hatred for western powers. They do not just condemn the West for its crimes, which are frequent enough. They are ‘Occidentalists’, to use the jargon: people who see the West as the ‘root cause’ of all evil.' Source.

What's Nick's evidence for these claims about Corbyn's supporters hating the West, supporting radical Islam, and blaming Isis terrorist attacks in Paris primarily on the West? He offers none. Except sometimes some anecdotes about a Corbynite who said this or did that.

Now undoubtedly, some of Corbyn's followers are indeed West-hating Islamist-apologists. But you obviously don't establish that all, of even most, Corbyn supporters are West-hating Islamist-apologists by wheeling out a few, or even many, anecdotes.

As any good critical thinker (which I know Nick can be) will tell you, such anecdotal evidence is the sort of evidence by which e.g. bloodletting was justified for two thousand years. It's the sort of evidence shoddy, partisan hacks use.

Which makes Nick Cohen's (an otherwise decent journalist) unsubstantiated portraits of Corbyn supporters - apparently based entirely on anecdotal evidence - all the more baffling. It's also why I devoted a full 10 minutes to getting a slightly more informed view of what Corbyn's supporters actually think.

POSTSCRIPT 18TH FEB.

I think Jeremy Corbyn is probably a decent bloke, not morally disgusting (whereas Cameron really is). He favours dialogue and to that end he certainly has used friendly and inclusive language with respect to some arseholes (though so did Thatcher re Pinochet, Cameron re Saudi, etc.). He has also lent somewhat in the direction of IRA and Hamas, but I think because he perceives them to be the underdogs lacking adequate representation and political clout, not because approves their violent attacks. Attacks of a sort that he publicly denounces all round, in fact. I don't defend everything Corbyn has said and done, but I know that he has been misrepresented and smeared. That claim he thought it a tragedy Osama Bin Laden was killed - bullshit. Been on Press TV? So have I, alongside a former US Ambassador. Who was Jewish. Standing in front of a poster praising Mao and Stalin? Check my blog post below on that - utterly ludicrous story. Why this concentration on such anecdotes? Because his opponents do not want to engage him on the economy, austerity, nationalisation, the NHS, etc, because he'll win. This 'Corbyn is a moral monster - look over there!' thing is to a large extent a smokescreen. Journalists - please don't contribute to it! Let's get the other issues at least as much coverage (they should be getting much more, in fact).