Welcome to the 179th Carnival of Mathematics. The Carnival is a monthly post, hosted by a different maths blog each month, collecting interesting mathematical content from all over the internet. This time, we’re on home turf – here at the Aperiodical, with a post by regular guest author Paul Taylor.
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Aperiodvent, Day 22: The Royal Statistical Society Christmas Quiz
For fans of outlandishly devious puzzles, the highlight of every Christmas is the RSS Quiz. No statistical knowledge is needed, but you will need all of your lateral thinking skills, extreme Google-fu and inspired leaps of pure intuition (these will form a set of what mathematicians call ‘necessary but not sufficient conditions’). You can’t win a prize if you’re not a member of the society, but since the questions are so preposterously difficult, this is unlikely to have a material effect.
Update: as RSS quizmaster Tim Paulden has pointed out in the comments, this year’s quiz has also been published by The Guardian, where there is a prize available to non-RSS-member teams.
This post is part of the Aperiodical’s 2018 Aperiodvent Calendar.
Aperiodvent, Day 21: Mathematical Christmas Cracker Jokes
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Are Christmas Cracker jokes not funny because they’re cleverly designed to inspire a sense of friendship through shared disappointment? Or are there just not many workable puns available with Yuletide subject matter? Either way, the one thing guaranteed to make them even unfunnier is shoehorning in some obscure mathematical concepts. So why not have a look at our post from 2012 with ten of our ‘favourites’?
This post is part of the Aperiodical’s 2018 Aperiodvent Calendar.
Aperiodvent, Day 19: James Grime’s Maths of Christmas
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Friend of the Aperiodical James Grime made this video in 2009 discussing the arithmetic of the Twelve Days of Christmas song. Watch carefully and you might spot in the background the picture he keeps of himself that ages in his place.
Aperiodvent, Day 15: Mathematical Present Wrapping video
In the viral YouTube hit of Christmas 2015, Katie Steckles demonstrates some of the most mathematically satisfying ways you can wrap your Christmas presents.
Aperiodvent, Day 14: Dodecahedron star lantern
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If you manage to dismiss all the ads, the blog Happiness is Homemade has a post which shows you how to make a cool dodecahedral star lantern out of paper (and glue, and you’ll need a light source too if you want it to actually function as a lantern).
This post is part of the Aperiodical’s 2018 Aperiodvent Calendar.
Aperiodvent, Day 13: Fold-and-Cut Christmas Tree
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The fold and cut theorem, which states that, after sufficient folding, any shape made of straight lines can be cut out of a piece of paper in one cut, is probably the most crafts-friendly result in all of maths. Inspired by The Aperiodical’s very own Katie Steckles’ video on the subject, Sam Hartburn has created a handy PDF with instructions for folding and cutting a festive Christmas tree shape.
This post is part of the Aperiodical’s 2018 Aperiodvent Calendar.