We chatted to Chris Dawson – the creator of Jigsy, a shape-based puzzle app which we’ve enjoyed playing – to find out more about where it came from and how it was developed.
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Books to Recommend to Maths Students
I was asked recently by a first-year maths undergrad student if I could recommend any books on problem-solving, as they were hoping to develop their problem-solving skills. Asking around some maths communication colleagues has resulted in an impressive list of recommendations for books for maths undergraduate students, which I’m sharing here.
A Puzzle about a Calculator
It’s now been a year since I took over the puzzle column at New Scientist and turned it into the BrainTwisters column. By way of celebration, I thought I’d write up an interesting bit of maths behind one of the puzzles, which I made a note of at the time and have been meaning to share.
Last-minute Mathematical Gifts
If you’ve got a mathematical friend you need to buy a Christmas gift for but have left it too late, here’s some suggestions for what you could get them, drawn from things our friends are doing (that don’t need you to wait for something to arrive in the post).
Mathematical Gift Guide 2023
Since it’s the time of year when you might be looking for mathematical gifts to buy for your friends, colleagues and loves ones, I thought I’d share some recommendations and suggestions for places to find gifts online.
Mathematical Drawing Hacks
At this year’s MathsJam UK Gathering, I had the pleasure of running one of the Saturday Night Tables – a chance to invite attendees at the Gathering to drop by and play with something. Together with fellow Manchester MathsJam regular Andrew Taylor, I ran a table of Mathematical Drawing Hacks – ways to make drawing complex mathematical objects and shapes easier.
21X competition – results
A while ago we announced a competition to win a copy of algebraic blackjack game 21X, which was recently successful on Kickstarter, smashing its funding target by an order of magnitude. If you’d like to pre-order a copy of the game, you can sign up to be notified when that’s possible.
We had over 30 entries in the competition, of which 20 achieved correct answers, and have picked a random set of winners to pass on to Naylor Games, who should be in touch with them by email in the next few days.
For anyone interested in seeing the answers, here’s what they were. As a reminder, the challenge here is to find a value for \(x\), given that \(n\) represents the number of cards, to get the total of all the card values closest to 21.