I’m teaching a first-year module on the history of mathematics for undergraduate mathematicians this term. In this, I’m less concerned about students learning historical facts and more that they gain a general awareness of history of maths while learning about the methods used to study history. Last week, I decided I would discuss myths and…
Wherein CP does that exam problem with the crocodile
This morning, Twitter was doing its Twitter thing about a maths problem again. Most people were linking to this BBC story, “Crocodile maths question ‘was challenging’”. Apparently this year’s Scottish New Higher maths exam contained a question which a lot of people found hard. You could remove the word “crocodile” from that headline and obtain a perfectly…
Puzzlebomb – October 2015
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 46 of Puzzlebomb, for October 2015, can be found here: Puzzlebomb – Issue 46 – October 2015 The solutions to Issue 46 can be found here: Puzzlebomb – Issue 46 – October 2015 – Solutions Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Tessellation Art by Chris Watson
Chris Watson has written in to tell us about his site, Tessellation Art, where he sells his heavily Escher-inspired prints. They’re available in a range of sizes and media, and quite affordably priced. I particularly like the print above, titled Vortex.
Guest post: Sequence Numbers
This is a guest post, sent in by David, who’s discovered an interesting property of numbers, and is looking for collaborators to take it further. Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that…
What I did on my summer holidays
This summer my wife and I went to America on our honeymoon. We had a lovely time – it was hot, we saw stripey flags in all sizes, and we marvelled at what substances count as “food” in the land of the free. But what I really want to tell you about is the National Museum of…
Tiling a finite plane
Katie and Paul became homeowners recently. That naturally led to some mathematical DIY.