Welcome to the 94th Carnival of Mathematics! This month the carnival has once again trundled in to Blackboard Bold at the Aperiodical, though this time with myself rather than Katie at the helm (carnivals have helms).
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Möbius house
Since the Möbius band is such a cool object, it follows that anything made from a Möbius band or in the shape of a Möbius band is therefore also supercool. Also: the bigger, the better. So how about a Möbius house?
Korean architects Planning Korea have come up with a scale model and computer generated images of an amazing house based on the one-sided wonder, which uses the face of the Möbius strip as the roof and walls, with the front and back of the house covered in glass windows. It would take twice as long to paint the outside of your house (it’s also the inside), but otherwise you’d be sitting pretty. I do hope that’s a Möbius shed visible in the background, and a probability tree in the garden.
If you’re looking for something to sit on in your non-orientable domicile – presumably, while wearing your Conjoined Möbius Hat – there’s always this chair, which was incorrectly identified as being a Möbius strip by NotCot, and features a distinctly Möbiusy-looking wooden frame with coloured hanging net, to throw yourself into at the end of a long day of one-sided arguments and twisted stripping (don’t ask).
Dancing shapes by Carlo Vega
[vimeo url=http://vimeo.com/56524400]
Inspired by the great Geometry Daily blog.
AS maths results and batting averages
Phil Harvey gave a talk on this subject at last November’s MathsJam conference. We liked it so much, we asked him if we could put it on the site. Phil’s kindly written his talk up as an essay for us.
I am 64¼ years old and I’ve been a maths teacher all my working life. In that time things have changed. Long gone are the days when gowned masters would sweep in, silence any murmur with half a raised eyebrow, and delight compliant uniformed schoolchildren with chalk-covered boards of mathematical exposition.
No, you’re right. That never happened outside the covers of Goodbye Mr Chips, even in my day.
The reality then. Schoolchildren have morphed into learners. Exam results rule. Quality (in the sense that Orwell might have used the word) is managed by quality managers. And so our working lives are driven by the pursuit of Ofsted targets, success rates, achievement rates, benchmarks, observation grades, results. And every joyless lesson has its own lesson plan, with aims, objectives, learning outcomes and action points. But above all, those damned results – and every year, year after year, they had to IMPROVE.
Well I was no good at any of this stuff – and consequently I always got on very badly with my managers. Until one year…
Aperiodical Round Up 8: if a bird heard the word ‘surd’
Right, let’s be havin’ ya! My name’s Christian Perfect, I’ve got some links, and you’ve got some eyes. Aperiodical Round Up 8, arriving later than scheduled at Platform Your Face.
Puzzlebomb – January 2013
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 13 of Puzzlebomb, for January 2013, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 13 – January 2013
The solutions to Issue 13 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 13 – January 2013 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Mathematical Christmas Cracker Jokes
At this time of year, terrible and/or groan-worthy jokes come to the fore, and are completely acceptable, and in some cases encouraged, provided they’re preceded by a bang noise and read out from a tiny piece of paper.
Rummaging around on my computer today, I found a set of mathematical Christmas cracker jokes I wrote for a party thrown for a group of mathematicians a couple of years ago, where I hacked apart a set of crackers and replaced the toys with tiny slide rules, the paper hats with ones cut into fractal curves along the top, and the existing awful jokes with awful mathematical ones. I thought I’d share them with you all, since they’re more likely to be appreciated by maths fans.