As part of the 24 Hour Maths Game Show which took place at the end of October 2022, our own Christian Lawson-Perfect designed a maths/games crossover gameshow format to end them all – a mashup of hexagon-fighting TV quiz Blockbusters, and his own personal obsession: interesting mathematical factoids. Welcome to Blockbusters of Interesting Maths!
This week and last I hosted a series of public maths talks featuring disabled presenters. I’ll post about how that went later, but for now I just want to share this clip of me filling time spreading Christmas joy.
This is a party trick that Katie Steckles showed me: you can fold a piece of paper and then make a single cut to produce a five-pointed star. I showed how to do it by following the instructions I’d been told, and then recreated the steps just starting from the insight that when you make the cut, all the edges of the shape need to be on top of each other.
Maybe you’ll show someone else how to do it during the Christmas holiday?
This doesn’t only work for stars: there’s a theorem that you can make any polygon by folding and a single cut. Erik Demaine has made a really good page about the theorem, with some examples to print out and links to research papers. Katie can cut out any letter of the alphabet on demand, which is impressive to witness!
We spoke to Coralie Colmez, mathematician and author of Math on Trial, about her genre-busting new Young Adult novel for mathematically minded teenagers: The Irrational Diary of Clara Valentine.
Looking for small/inexpensive items to put inside a piece of festive footwear (or, to keep for yourself)? Here’s a selection of things we’ve seen lately that you might want to buy! All the items we’re showing are under £20, and range from slightly mathematical to very mathematical.
Looking for something mathematical to amuse you, give your puzzling brain a workout or otherwise satisfy your mathematical curiosity every day for the next month? Look no further – here’s a round-up of our favourite mathsy advent calendars for 2022.
Does this picture make you think of Srinvasa Ramanujan? I’m always fascinated by the pace and range of little conversations with my seven-year-old son that wander in and out of maths. Let me tell you how we got there during a five minute chat while leaving the house and walking to school this morning.
Some thinking aloud about what’s happening on social media in my world, I hope you don’t mind.
