I had the idea of doing short videos about mathematical objects I’ve got lying around. First up is a very unconventional group theory textbook.
You're reading: cp’s mathem-o-blog
Wherein CLP “improves” Chinese New Year
新年好, everyone! It was Chinese New Year on Monday, starting the year of the monkey. I didn’t really pay attention last year, so I didn’t know that it had been the year of the goat. I also wasn’t aware until just now when I looked it up that next year will be the year of the rooster.
Books a 14-year-old who’s good at maths might enjoy
My good friend David Cushing popped on Facebook messenger to ask me a question:
I did tweet it, and I got a lot of good responses. Before I tell you about those, I’ll quickly list the books we mentioned above, that of course a keen 13-year-old already has.
What I’ve done this year
I gave a talk at the big MathsJam conference at the start of this month. It happens annually, so I had a whole year to come up with something interestingly mathematical to entertain my fellow mathmos.
When it came time to decide on a topic, I realised I’ve done loads of stuff this year! It was really hard to choose. So, now MathsJam is over, I thought I’d collect together all the mathematical things I’ve done in the last 12 (-ish) months.
Ask Clever Hans a question
I’ve put a very clever horse on the internet. He’s called Hans and I’ve made a little video about him.
You can ask Clever Hans your own questions! Go to christianp.github.io/clever-hans and make sure your microphone is turned on. Another proviso: I think only Google Chrome supports the special technology I used to make Hans work. Sorry!
I’ll explain how Hans does his horsey magic below the fold.
Wherein CP does that exam problem with the crocodile
This morning, Twitter was doing its Twitter thing about a maths problem again. Most people were linking to this BBC story, “Crocodile maths question ‘was challenging'”.
Apparently this year’s Scottish New Higher maths exam contained a question which a lot of people found hard. You could remove the word “crocodile” from that headline and obtain a perfectly acceptable statement about a maths exam, but that’s not what people are complaining about.
What I did on my summer holidays
This summer my wife and I went to America on our honeymoon. We had a lovely time – it was hot, we saw stripey flags in all sizes, and we marvelled at what substances count as “food” in the land of the free.
But what I really want to tell you about is the National Museum of Mathematics in New York. We couldn’t fly all the way to the East coast of America and not pay a visit. So we did!
