The dust is settling on the ninth Big MathsJam, and before I get too sad that it’s nearly a year until the next one, I put down some thoughts about what was so good about this one.
Big MathsJam Highlights, 2018
Here are the mathematicians you nominated to go on the new £50 note
The Bank of England has released a preliminary list of names nominated by the public to appear on the new £50 note. I’ve done a bit of analysis on the list, and present here my findings. To recap: the Bank asked for nominations satisfying the following conditions: have contributed to the field of science be…
Rachel Riley admits she can’t do maths (but not really)
Eagle-eyed Riley-botherers on Twitter may have noticed this video Rachel tweeted on Saturday:
https://twitter.com/RachelRileyRR/status/1066407882839769090
Euler in maths and engineering
Inspired by Katherine Johnson’s character in the film Hidden Figures and her use of Euler’s Method, engineer Natalie-Claire Luwisha has written this guest post about Euler’s contribution to engineering. I thoroughly enjoyed Hidden Figures because of the overall message and inspiration it generated for all women, especially women of colour. Even today in the 21st…
Carnival of Mathematics 161
Issue 161 of the Carnival of Mathematics, slightly belatedly rounding up blog posts from the month of August, and compiled by Alex, is now online at CoDiMa. 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.
Zeckendorf cup arithmetic
My 5-minute talk at the big MathsJam conference this weekend was about some stacking cups that my daughter is too young to appreciate. Here’s the really quick version, in just over a minute: I gave the answer at MathsJam, but the title of this post contains a big hint that should get you there with…
Baking Babylonian cuneiform tablets in gingerbread
The MathsJam conference has a baking competition. My friend the archaeologist Stephen O’Brien tweeted a while ago a link to a fun blog post ‘Edible Archaeology: Gingerbread Cuneiform Tablets‘. Babylonian tablets are among the earliest written evidence of mathematics that we have, and were produced by pressing a stylus into wet clay. So it was…