The Aperiodical 

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Mathematical genius: extrapolate from your own experience?

By Peter Rowlett. Posted January 12, 2017

The BBC biography series Great Lives covered in its most recent episode Srinivasa Ramanujan. In the closing minutes of the programme, host Matthew Paris said this, which I found quite interesting (or at least, interestingly expressed):

I’m so far from understanding the mind of a mathematical genius that it’s simply inconceivable that you could tell a person an apparently random number and he could intuit or deduce the kind of fact that he deduced about that taxi license number. I mean, I can’t run a four-minute mile, but I once ran a five-minute mile, and I can extrapolate from my own experience, in a way understand how someone might just be a lot better than me at something that, in an inferior way, I can also do. But Ramanujan isn’t like that. It’s as though this man were a different species, not just a superior example of the same species. Can you learn to do this kind of thing? Could I, if I had applied myself? Or is it that goddess again, is it really just genius?

Answers on a postcard!

Carnival of Mathematics 141

By Katie Steckles. Posted January 10, 2017

The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of December, and compiled by the team, is now online at Ganit Charcha.

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.

Call for submissions for Math Teachers at Play blog carnival

By Peter Rowlett. Posted January 6, 2017

Readers of The Aperiodical are probably familiar with the Carnival of Mathematics, a monthly blog roundup which takes any maths-related content. Did you also know there is a related blog carnival called Math Teachers at Play?

The Math Teachers at Play (MTaP) blog carnival is a monthly collection of tips, tidbits, games, and activities for students and teachers of preschool through pre-college mathematics. We welcome entries from parents, students, teachers, homeschoolers, and just plain folks. If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.

I’ll be hosting the January 2017 edition of MTaP here at Travels in a Mathematical World. Of course, a blog carnival is only as good as its submissions, so if you join me in aspiring to the claim “you are sure to find something of interest” then please keep your eyes open for interesting blog posts and submit them to MTaP. Please submit posts you’ve enjoyed by others or yourself. Posts you wrote that are appropriate to the theme are strongly encouraged. Submit through the MTaP submission form, leave a comment here or tweet me. Thank you!

Submissions are open now, and anything received by Friday 20th January 2017 will be considered for the edition hosted here.

Mobile Numbers: Multiples of nine

By Katie Steckles. Posted December 23, 2016

In this series of posts, Katie investigates simple mathematical concepts using the Google Sheets spreadsheet app on her phone. If you have a simple maths trick, pattern or concept you’d like to see illustrated in this series, please get in touch.

We’re all (hopefully) aware that a pleasing property of numbers that are divisible by nine is that the sum of their digits is also divisible by nine.

It’s actually more well known that this works with multiples of three, and an even more pleasing fact is that the reason three and nine work is because nine is one less than the number base (10), and anything that’s a factor of this will also work – so, in base 13, this should work for multiples of 12, 6, 4, 3 and 2. Proving this is a bit of fun.

Once when I was thinking about this fact, an interesting secondary question occurred.

Puzzlebomb – December 2016

By Katie Steckles. Posted December 21, 2016

Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 60 of Puzzlebomb, for December 2016, can be found here:

Puzzlebomb – Issue 60 – December 2016 (printer-friendly version)

The solutions to Issue 59 can be found here:

Puzzlebomb – Issue 60 – December 2016 – Solutions

This will be the last regular monthly Puzzlebomb – in future, there will be occasional one-offs but regular editions are taking a break. If you have any ideas for puzzles, please send them in! Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.

The maths of the Grime Cube

By Katie Steckles. Posted December 15, 2016

Not content with already having five cubes named after him, internet maths phenomenon James Grime has now developed a new Rubik’s cube-style puzzle for internet maths joy merchants Maths Gear. I’ve been slightly involved in the development process, so I thought I’d share some of the interesting maths behind it.

Another name for a Rubik’s cube is ‘the Magic Cube’ – and Dr James Grime wondered if you could make a Magic Cube which incorporates its 2D friend, the Magic Square.

Paper about student use of a learning space in mathematics

By Peter Rowlett. Posted December 7, 2016

One of the nice things about working in mathematics at Sheffield Hallam University is the environment in which I work. The maths department is a big, open learning space for students surrounded by staff offices. It’s a busy place, full of activity and plenty of opportunities to interact with students and other staff.

This space was renovated for mathematics a little before I arrived. It was designed to enhance student engagement and to create this sense of community, to allow collaborative learning and encourage inter-year interactions.

Over the last year, we conducted a study of use of the space. This included observations of use of the space as well as questionnaires and interviews with students about their use of the space, including students who had studied in the department in the old and new locations.

The results have just been published as ‘The role of informal learning spaces in enhancing student engagement with mathematical sciences‘ by Jeff Waldock, Peter Rowlett, Claire Cornock, Mike Robinson & Hannah Bartholomew, which is online now and will appear in a future issue of International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (doi:10.1080/0020739X.2016.1262470).