As part of Puzzlebomb’s commitment to bringing you all puzzles, all the time, we present a special one-off edition, consisting of festive wordplay. Enjoy! Solutions will be posted in roughly a month from now.
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Is History Important?
In the novel I, Claudius, Robert Graves imagines a conversation between three Roman historians: Claudius, Livy and Pollio. After a long argument involving moral decline and sulphurous sheep, the young Claudius comes to the conclusion that:
“…There are two different ways of writing history: one is to persuade men to virtue, the other is to compel men to truth”
Carnival of Mathematics 117
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of November, and compiled by Rachel Thomas, is now online at Plus Magazine.
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.
Puzzlebomb – December 2014
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 36 of Puzzlebomb, for December 2014, can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 36 – December 2014
The solutions to Issue 36 can be found here:
Puzzlebomb – Issue 36 – December 2014 – Solutions
Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Announcing The Aperiodical’s Best Maths Pun of 2014 Competition
Here’s one of my favourite maths puns.
What’s yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice?
Zorn’s Lemon!!!!!!!!
I like it because it’s a real groaner, but to even begin to see what it’s punning on you have to know some pretty obscure facts about set theory. That makes it an ideal maths pun.
Maths puns abound (both upper and lower). Most of the time they make your eyes roll so badly that gimbal lock becomes a consideration, but a real corker makes all the years of mathematical study worthwhile.
Since the year is about to end, we thought it’d be a fun idea to collect some new maths puns, and run a quick competition to find 2014’s best offering (or the local maxipun at 2014, as we like to call it).
Things I Made And Did
Since you’re here reading this, you probably know that on October 30th, Matt “Friend of the Site” Parker released his book, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension. If you’ve gone one further and read it, you might have seen the occasional reference to the website, makeanddo4d.com. If that website is the book’s DVD extras, this is the website’s extras. We’re going to peek behind the scenes and see how it all works. (Spoiler alert: the maths is powered by maths. It’s recursive maths, all the way down.)
Paper about teaching using ‘unplanned impact’
I have a paper published online-first by BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. This means it is online and will be in an upcoming issue.
My title is: ‘The unplanned impact of mathematics’ and its implications for research funding: a discussion-led educational activity.
Abstract: