TheConversation: A day in the Life of Pi

“Most people have heard of the mathematical constant Pi (π), and will know that it’s roughly 3.14. Taking inspiration from these three digits, March 14 (3/14 in the US date format) is heralded as international Pi Day, first marked by US physicist Larry Shaw in 1988. This year brings a unique opportunity to demonstrate an …

TheConversation: Pull up a chair, we need to talk about sexist language at work

“With the arrival of the first woman to head the BBC Trust, a perennially tricky question is once again causing awkwardness. Rona Fairhead took the helm of the trust on October 9, but is she be a chairwoman, a chair or a chairman? It might seem like a secondary concern – the head of the …

TheConversation: How are the football fixtures created?

“When the English football fixtures were announced in June, many fans would have studied them from their own perspective. Are the fixtures fair to their team? Why do they have to travel the full length of the country on a Wednesday evening in the middle of February when, no doubt, it will be cold and …

TheConversation: Ignore John Humphrys when he rants about grammar, he just wants attention

“It’s not often that grammar makes the news, but there’s currently a good natured spat going on between Melvyn Bragg and John Humphrys. Bragg hosts a long running BBC Radio discussion show called In Our Time, which is a fairly high-brow discussion in which he invites academics to discuss the intellectual legacy of certain ideas. …

TheConversation: It attracts a lot of readers

Over the past few months, we have featured some (all, I hope) of the articles that colleagues at UNMC have written for TheConversation. We have also promoted the idea that you should consider writing for TheConverstion, as it does tend to attract a lot of readers. We are pleased to see that a few of …

TheConversation: Love, peace and the plight of the air hostess: Google opens its brain to armchair linguists

“I downloaded a new keyboard onto my phone yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to see it suggesting the word “to” after I had typed “going”. It “knew” that the phrase “going to” was a very common pair of words and managed to use this in order to speed up the message I was sending. The …

TheConversation: The natural way to keep fruit fresh and stop the rot

“Nearly a third of all the food produced in the world is lost or wasted, according to the UN’s World Resources Institute. If we convert this mass into calories, it constitutes …” … so begins an article that Prof. Asgar Ali recently has published in TheConversation. Other Conversation articles that we have featured on this …

TheConversation: To write English like a professor, don’t rely on Google translate

“Thankfully, nobody speaks academic English as a first language. The English of the university is a very particular form that has specific features and conventions. Sometimes, this is just referred to as ‘academic style’. It used to be a matter of instinct – what felt right. But now ….” … so starts a piece written …

A (possible) easy way to write for TheConversation

In previous posts we have mentioned articles that UNMC academics have written for TheConversation. One of our latest articles is an Explainer article. These are short articles that explain some topic for the interested reader. We were thinking some of our “What is …” articles might be suitable for TheConversation. That is not to say …

TheConversation: The maths behind your examination timetable

As UNMC, along with many other universities, enters its examination period, we suspect that students have more to worry about than how the examination timetable is created. But, in case you do care, a recent piece in TheConversation explains some of the difficulties, and why it is impossible to create a timetable that everybody is …