We spoke to friend of the site, award-winning maths communicator and past math-off competitor Kyle Evans about his Edinburgh Fringe show for 2023, which is about maths.
Interview: Kyle Evans on his 2023 Fringe show, Maths at the Museum
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Carnival of Mathematics 217
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of June 2023, is now online at Double Root.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Hexaflex yourself!
Hexaflexagons are great.
If you haven’t seen one before, you’re about to have a lovely time.
If you have seen them before, the reason I’m writing about them is that I’ve made a webpage that helps you create a template for a hexaflexagon with your choice of picture on each of the three faces.
We all need some space!
A couple of days ago, a question occurred to me:
What’s the furthest I’ve ever been from anyone else?
Alternative methods of arithmetic
This is a guest post by David Benjamin, who’s previously written several other guest posts on various topics.
It’s unavoidable that part of doing mathematics will always involve arithmetic: the simple calculations, additions and multiplications that so much else is built on. But the beauty of mathematics is that even these basic operations can be performed in a multitude of interesting ways.
Carnival of Mathematics 216
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of May 2023, is now online at Eddie’s Math and Calculator Blog.
The Carnival rounds up maths blog posts from all over the internet, including some from our own Aperiodical. See our Carnival of Mathematics page for more information.
Review: The Spirit of Mathematics
This is a review of David Acheson’s new book, which we were kindly sent a copy of to read.
In The Spirit of Mathematics: Algebra And All That, David has pulled together a collection of what he refers to as ‘elegant mathematics using only simple materials’ – neat, short algebraic proofs and definitions, models of physical systems and mathematical tricks and curiosities.
He includes all the classics, from proof by induction to Fibonacci numbers to hitting a snooker ball, and each is presented with enthusiasm, alongside stories of mathematicians – and fearlessly including all the equations and derivations (if every equation really did halve your readership, as Stephen Hawking believed, this would be a very brave book to publish). But the maths is well-explained and very approachable, and it’s refreshing to see it featured so prominently outside of a textbook.
The book is also filled with helpful diagrams and illustrations, as well as humorous asides, cartoons and pictures of many mathematicians (sadly, only one female mathematician is featured, and she’s included only for her joke about how hard she’s found it to get a proof…) – but the book is well-produced and clearly laid out, with well-defined, short chapters each with a clearly defined topic.
The result is a compendium of intriguing ideas which would fascinate and compel a keen mathematician wanting to learn more, and provide hours of intrigue and jumping-off points for further investigation. Most topics are only covered briefly, so a deeper understanding would need research elsewhere, but for an enthusiastic reader this would happen naturally. Each discovery is motivated by a real-world example, or an interesting puzzle or curiosity, and all the key topics from algebra are touched on in one way or another.
However, this book wouldn’t suit an inexperienced mathematician – given which steps in the calculations are described as ‘simple’, a reasonable level of maths is assumed, and I’d imagine a strong GCSE or A-level student, particularly one already keen to learn more, would get much more out of it than a younger student. It’d also suit an adult wishing to refresh their mathematical knowledge from school and pick up some new ideas. But despite the blurb on the back claiming ‘for those who dread the subject, this book may be an eye-opener’, I suspect that such a reader might struggle in places.
Overall, this is a well-presented celebration of the best parts of mathematics, and showcases just how powerful maths can be.