An obituary has been published in The Guardian for Ivor Grattan-Guinness, historian of mathematics and logic, who died of heart failure on 12th December 2014. This begins by explaining that when Ivor became interested in the history of mathematics in the 1960s, it was an area of study widely considered to be irrelevant to mathematics…
Puzzlebomb – January 2015
Puzzlebomb is a monthly puzzle compendium. Issue 37 of Puzzlebomb, for January 2015, can be found here: Puzzlebomb – Issue 37 – January 2015 (corrected version) The solutions to Issue 37 can be found here: Puzzlebomb – Issue 37 – January 2015 – Solutions Previous issues of Puzzlebomb, and their solutions, can be found here.
Puzzlebomb Presents: Special 2
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. Puzzlebomb – Specials 2
Say happy birthday to Christopher Zeeman on his 90th
Maths hero Christopher Zeeman will turn 90 in February. Normally when a mathematician reaches a big round number of years, there’ll be a celebratory day of lectures or even a small book. The LMS has decided to take things even further by setting up a website to collect people’s birthday wishes, as well as personal…
Just Get 10
Here’s a new numberiffic game from Veewo, the people who made noted Threes-a-like 1024 (which begat 2048, which inevitably begat 2048: Harry Styles edition). In Just Get 10, you have to get at least nineteen combine numbered blocks until you get one with a 10 on it. If you tap two adjacent blocks with the same number, they’re…
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…
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.