Maths legend Colin Wright posed this question on Twitter: Q for my maths tweeps – recommendations wanted for Maths Journals suitable for a bright and engaged Sixth Form student. Suggestions? — Colin Wright (@ColinTheMathmo) November 24, 2016 It led to a flurry of interesting replies, and here’s some of them.
Rubik’s cube manufacturer loses trademark battle
After all the excitement of the UK Rubik’s cube championships last weekend, the European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that after 10-year legal battle, the trademark on the shape of the Rubik’s cube is not valid. The trademark was registered in 1999, but since the original design of the cube was never patented, it’s long…
Education bits: new PBS maths series, National Numeracy game, etc.
I’m not normally interested in education stuff, but we’ve had a flurry of emails from various people telling us about their projects, and I’ve got nothing else to do today, so I thought I’d round them up.
A more equitable statement of the jealous husbands puzzle
Every time I use the jealous husbands river crossing problem, I prefix it with a waffly apology about its formulation. You’ll see what I mean; here’s a standard statement of the puzzle: Three married couples want to cross a river in a boat that is capable of holding only two people at a time, with…
Apéryodical: Mini-podcast with Ben Sparks and James Grime
As part of our special Apéry takeover today, I chatted to mathematicians Ben Sparks and James Grime, to find out what we know about the mathematics Apéry did – it’s an enjoyable 10-minute listen. Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: RSS | List of episodes
Apéryodical: Scratch and sniff ζ plot
Christian’s put together this fun applet for exploring the Zeta function – you can move your pointer around to reveal the value of $\zeta$ at each point in the complex plane. The hue (colour) revealed is the argument of the value, and the lightness (bright to dark) represents the magnitude. There’s a blog post over at…
Apéryodical: Roger Apéry’s Mathematical Story
This is a guest post by mathematician and maths communicator Ben Sparks. Roger Apéry: 14th November 1916 – 18th December 1994 100 years ago (on 14th November) was born a Frenchman called Roger Apéry. He died in 1994, is buried in Paris, and upon his tombstone is the cryptic inscription: \[ 1 + \frac{1}{8} + \frac{1}{27} +\frac{1}{64}…