Maths news, of a sort! The MathsJam conference, which takes place in November and brings together recreational maths nuts from all over the UK and world, has now got a new improved website. MathsJam is a monthly pub night for maths fans, where people can come together and share puzzles, games, problems or anything they…
Integer Sequence Review Mêlée Hyper-Battle DX 2000 (Bracket 2)
Last week A002210, the decimal expansion of Khintchine’s constant, emerged victorious from Bracket 1. Now, get ready for round 2 of… Here are the rules: we’re judging each sequence on four axes: Aesthetics, Completeness, Explicability, and Novelty. We’re reviewing six sequences each week for four weeks, picking a winner from each. Then, we’ll pick one sequence from…
Ghost Diagrams
Yet another fun toy for you. Give a computer a set of tiles defined by what their edges look like, can you fit them together? That problem is undecidable, since you can encode Turing machines as sets of tiles, but it turns out it’s fun to watch a computer try. Ghost Diagrams asks you for…
Another open source textbook
Recognising a good idea when he sees one, William Stein has put the source code to his Springer-published undergraduate textbook Elementary Number Theory: Primes, Congruences, and Secrets: A Computational Approach on GitHub. The book introduces classical elementary number theory and elliptic curves, with lots of Sage code to encourage you to play around with the structures…
A bit of midweek fun: ANCIENT GREEK GEOMETRY
This is a fun game to while away the midweek blues. You’re presented with two dots. You can drag between dots to create lines and circles, as if you had a straightedge and compass. Apart from a few challenges to get you thinking, that’s pretty much it! The game was created by Nico Disseldorp, who…
Math Overflow 2.0
Math Overflow, where intimidatingly clever mathematicians ask and answer research-relevant questions, has just been upgraded to version 2.0 of the Stack Exchange software which has powered the site since it opened in 2009. This is news because Math Overflow has merged with the commercial Stack Exchange network, losing its (semi-)independent status. There was a tiny…
Integer Sequence Review Mêlée Hyper-Battle DX 2000 (Bracket 1)
After taking a couple of weeks off from reviewing integer sequences, we’ve decided to shake up the format. Prepare yourself for… We’re going to review six sequences each week for four weeks, picking a winner from each. Then, we’ll pick one sequence from the ones we’ve already reviewed individually, plus a wildcard. Finally, a single…