Aperiodipal James Grime has put a new video on his YouTube channel. He’s got a problem to do with building houses: But James posts fantastic videos about maths puzzles all the time; what’s so notable about this one? I was involved, that’s what! The puzzle can be done on pen and paper but it involves…
Yakov Sinai awarded the 2014 Abel Prize
The Abel Prize for 2014 has gone to Yakov Sinai of Princeton University, “for his fundamental contributions to dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and mathematical physics”.
Everyone’s a mathematician
This morning Katie and I had a little discussion about house style on The Aperiodical. Mathematican Paul Taylor was listed as “Mathematician Paul Taylor” in the blurb for his featured post. I posited that everyone published here is a mathematician, so the “Mathematician” title is redundant. This of course resulted in me writing a userscript…
Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange
There’s a new Stack Exchange site for mathematics educators to ask and answer questions to do with the teaching of mathematics. To give you an idea of what the site’s for, here are a few interesting questions that have already been asked: How can I estimate the length of an exam? (top answer: do it yourself,…
Integer sequence review: A193430
The Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences contains over 200,000 sequences. It contains classics, curios, thousands of derivatives entered purely for completeness’s sake, short sequences whose completion would be a huge mathematical achievement, and some entries which are just downright silly. For a lark, David and I have decided to review some of the Encyclopedia’s sequences.…
How to solve a Rubik’s Cube in one easy step
Will repeating the same move on a Rubik’s cube eventually bring it back to a solved state? And if so, how many turns will it take? Paul Taylor investigates.
Follow Friday, 21/03/14
It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these, but here’s a selection of Twitter accounts you may wish to follow. This week, the theme is numbers! 1. Prime Numbers 36871 — Prime Numbers (@_primes_) March 14, 2014 While I usually try to pull out an interesting tweet to showcase the brilliance of the…