Best discount code ever??

Wednesday, 11 January, 2017

This might just rank as the best discount code Ive ever received, courtesy of Pixellu with their new SmartSlides beta… Judge for yourself!

Maths - the magic number (or magic bullet?)

Wednesday, 4 January, 2017

A really interesting news story from October (I know - it’s sat in my bookmarks staring at me!) on the BBC titled Maths becomes biology’s magic number… it’s a good point that Tom Feilden makes about the nature of inter-disciplinarity and how different subject areas draw upon one another and interbreed to use existing methods/solutions to new problems.

As the introduction to this, he quotes Sir Rory Collins (Oxford University) as saying: “If you want a career in medicine these days you’re better off studying mathematics or computing than biology.” But actually, you could replace “medicine” and “biology” with a range of other subject areas, including geography. Maths (and related areas in computer science) is the language of nature, of science (something Galileo commented on). Maths provides a descriptive and analytical framework for understanding, analysing and communicating scientific ideas and a lack of mathematical ability is something that continues to vex educators around the world (see the ASE for a guide).

So it’s a timely reminder where our current capabilities lie and how we need to build communities that can identify and explore the pressing research requirements that society will have in the future.

Geosheets tutorial

Wednesday, 4 January, 2017

GIS-Geography had a nice geosheets tutorial just before Christmas which is worth a look-in. Geosheets is not a service I had seen before and operates as a plugin for Google Sheets, adding functionality to geocode spreadsheet data and plot on a basemap. Of course ArcGIS Online and, indeed, Google MyMaps. However Geosheets offers you the ability to create within Google Sheets itself using some simple syntax. I wonder if they have enough to survive (don’t complete with Google or Esri!) but, in the interim, it’s another toolbox for geoenthusiasts.