Here’s one of my favourite maths puns. What’s yellow and equivalent to the axiom of choice? Zorn’s Lemon!!!!!!!! I like it because it’s a real groaner, but to even begin to see what it’s punning on you have to know some pretty obscure facts about set theory. That makes it an ideal maths pun. Maths puns…
Since you’re here reading this, you probably know that on October 30th, Matt “Friend of the Site” Parker released his book, Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension. If you’ve gone one further and read it, you might have seen the occasional reference to the website, makeanddo4d.com. If that website is the book’s DVD extras,…
I have a paper published online-first by BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. This means it is online and will be in an upcoming issue. My title is: ‘The unplanned impact of mathematics’ and its implications for research funding: a discussion-led educational activity. Abstract:
Theorem: You can turn any shape into a rabbit by adding a face, ears and a tail to it. Proof (by construction): geobunnies.com This is delightful. There’s a new school of Platonism, one which believes that not only do ideal shapes exist, so do the bunnies inside them. Joy!
I describe myself in my mini-bio as a Maths Enthusiast, Egyptologist and Streetdancer. Can I upgrade myself from Maths Enthusiast to Mathematician? The answer to this question is a cultural one. We can put aside the question of whether mathematics itself is ‘real’ or not. The names we give to the people that do maths,…
Katie Steckles discovers there are way more fictional mathematicians than you might expect.
A street in Belfast is to be named after the late John Stewart Bell, a quantum physicist whose work has had a huge impact on modern physics and quantum information theory. Bell passed away in 1990, before he could be awarded a Nobel prize for his work, and Belfast Council have agreed to name a…