A visit from the Prime Minister

It was great to welcome David Cameron, British Prime Minister, officially to open our new Wolfram Centre in Oxfordshire, UK today.

Rather than a traditional plaque unveiling, we went virtual: an iPad button wirelessly firing off a sequence on a nearby TV, the ending "plaque" presenting live data captured at the moment of unveiling--the current weather, FTSE level, star chart and even the PM's age of 16562 days.

More seriously, we talked two topics I believe are key Britain's hi-tech role: making government data truly accessible (to citizens and government(!) alike) and resetting maths education to be computer-based--both more conceptual and more practical.

It's interesting how much the first chimed with the PM's 2010 TED talk about people empowerment in a "post bureaucratic age". It was fun showing how Wolfram|Alpha queries and interactive CDF could serve this agenda (including through Siri), and how the problem-centred approach of computerbasedmath.org might give the UK an opportunity to leapfrog other countries in STEM.

It's clear that the PM is keen to see Britain as a bold new tech and information hub, able to punch above its weight in reshaping the value-chain of knowledge, or what I've described before as the "computational knowledge economy".

In our unusual kind of way, I believe we can contribute unique facets to driving this agenda.

Rebranding maths education

I really like the badge our team came up with for computerbasedmath.org. If you stand on the power and automation of computers, you really can reach to infinity! Maths has been truely aspirational to world development and so it can be to each individual too.

Our next challenge: make a 3D printout.

P.S. If you like our plans why not show your support by adding this to your website? Available here.

Computer-based math eduation summit

Just a quick posting that we had a terrific first computer-based math education summit at the Royal Institution in London. We made good progress at an early start to charting out a new direction for the world's math students both for formal curricula and for the multitide of other ways that learning takes place.

Over the coming months you'll see topics and modules showcased alongside video of discussions from the conference. We haven't worked out our full plan yet, but for something destined to take a minimum of 10 years, we're thinking it through carefully. Watch this space!

Call me a control freak...

...and many would...but I like my environment to be set-up right. In particular, I'm pretty fussy about being at the right temperature. Yet inadequate control plagues our office and particularly home heating systems, wasting huge amounts of energy and making us uncomfortable into the bargain.

This came up in specing the HVAC system for our new office. Optimising zones v. heat recovery v. control sophistication is pretty complex and more control can be quite costly. Moreover, just modelling each room to answer questions like "will we always be able to get it to 21C within 1 hour" is surprisingly fraught. What outside temperatures to assume? How insulating are the room's walls, floor and ceiling? What are their heat capacities? How many people will be there?

(I can't help noticing this would be a great computerbasedmath.org module. It's exactly the sort of real-life maths question that today's curricula don't equip students well for and for which learning intricacies of hand-calculating won't help you).

Next step: see whether we can get to the system's API and use Mathematica to make a nice interface to it.

For the home, there are an increasing range of retrofit, wireless solutions for traditional wet central heating systems that have only a few years of payback. I've for some time had a Honeywell CM-ZONE and now an EVOHOME I put in. One of the worst marketed piece of tech, it's a pretty nice system that most plumbers don't know about.

It's a new Wolfram Research Europe...

17 years ago, we moved into our current Oxfordshire offices---yup, one year after I started doing non-stop email. Well, today we're moving to a custom built new office just up the road. The site is kind of an interesting place actually--where pioneers in wildlife filming Oxford Scientific Films set-up in 1968. Strangely I had had a school trip there in around 1982 and I'm pretty sure they told us they'd just finished filming a Cadbury's "glass and a half" ad with a then new micro video camera moving along many chocolate bars. None were left by the time we arrived!

Even though this is an exciting, positive move, there's a strangely eerie, reminiscent feeling sitting where I am now at my desk: all my stuff packed up, my monitor, phone and desk, the last to go. I was decidedly young when we moved in; I'm quite a bit creakier now...

And oh has the technology changed. 17 years ago I was equipped with a fine if monochrome NeXTStation computer. I wondered whether I really needed a colour monitor; it seemed unnecessary. And I needed lots of filing and a complex system of trays to manage my paperwork. Clearing up this morning, I realise that I haven't accessed physical files for 3+ years for anything. They're not moving with me.

It was here I was sitting when I first heard about "the world wide web". The keen Mathematica user from CERN on the phone was surprised that I hadn't tried it yet and hadn't understood how much it was going to change the world.

Over the years my desk size has reduced, as has the volume of my monitor and filing cabinets (even my waistline has shrunk, though it's now past its minimum!). Only my screensize has grown.

Time for my computer to get packed now...Off to the next (hopefully also prime) 17 years from Monday--a new era for Wolfram Research Europe Ltd.