Breaking news! On 19th January 2016, the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search discovered a new largest prime number – we know 49 Mersenne primes, the largest of which is now $2^{74207281}-1$, a number containing over 22 million digits and full of primey goodness. Internet Maths Person Matt Parker has responded to the news in spectacular style,…
Our top 10 posts from 2015
In 2015 The Aperiodical went from strength to strength again, with 179 posts published by 18 authors. I’ve collected our ten most popular posts from 2015, in case you missed them.
Relatively Prime Recap: Season 2, Episode 3: Mathematistan
I have to say, I chuckled: the week Relatively Prime hits ‘noteworthy’ on iTunes is the week Samuel discusses using maths to do well in popularity contests. Coincidence? I think not. To me, episode 3 of the second series represents something of a return to form for one of the top half-dozen maths podcasts around;…
Messiaen’s “Quartet for the end of time”, animated by Simon Russell and Marcus du Sautoy
Marcus du Sautoy has teamed up with animator Simon Russell to create this animatino to accompany Messiaen’s Quartet for the end of time. It’s got all the usual arty maths things in it – the Fibonacci sequence and golden ratio, prime numbers, polygons and polyhedra of all sorts – as well as the less well-trodden sporadic group…
Books a 14-year-old who’s good at maths might enjoy
My good friend David Cushing popped on Facebook messenger to ask me a question: I did tweet it, and I got a lot of good responses. Before I tell you about those, I’ll quickly list the books we mentioned above, that of course a keen 13-year-old already has.
Carnival of Mathematics 130
The next issue of the Carnival of Mathematics, rounding up blog posts from the month of December, and compiled by Brian, is now online at Bit Player. 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.
Relatively Prime Recap: Season 2, Episode 2: Your Daily Recommended Math[s]
Maths – as teachers are fond of telling anyone who’ll listen – is everywhere. In this difficult second episode of the difficult second series of Relatively Prime, Samuel Hansen shows us a few important places where it can be a help: at the petrol pump, at the birthday party, in the car park and at…