At this time of year, terrible and/or groan-worthy jokes come to the fore, and are completely acceptable, and in some cases encouraged, provided they’re preceded by a bang noise and read out from a tiny piece of paper. Rummaging around on my computer today, I found a set of mathematical Christmas cracker jokes I wrote…
Can you do long division? And other questions we’d like answers to.
Do you know how to do long division? I don’t. Prompted by an annoying article I saw, I’d like to know how many people do know how to do long division. So this is as good an opportunity as any to use a side-project I’ve been working on recently, which I’ve called The Aperiodical’s Mathematical Survey.…
Gregorian Calendarists predict coming apocalypse
People all over the world are today increasingly worried about the foretold end of the world, predicted by the ending of the current cycle of the Gregorian calendar. The calendar, which so far has been running for a period of around 355 days, will come to an end on 31st December, at which point experts [citation…
Amazing Sierpinski Tetrahedron
In the wake of a flurry of tetrices being constructed in schools all over the country (see this post about fractal Christmas tree worksheets, and this post featuring photos of completed trees), we’ve also been sent a video of a school group constructing an ambitious and impressive fractal structure, using envelopes cleverly folded into tetrahedra. The…
Fractal Christmas Trees – Your Photos
Having posted about Matt Parker’s Fractal Christmas Tree last week, we’ve had quite a few photos of completed trees sent in! Here’s a Tony Hart gallery-style roundup of them.
Math Professor Invents Non-Reversing Mirror
Andrew Hicks, a professor at Drexel University, has invented a new type of curved mirror which shows the reflection without inverting it left-right, as normal plane mirrors do. Although this effect can be achieved by placing two mirrors at right angles and looking at them both along the 45 degree bisector (as anyone who’ve ever…
Keith Devlin’s 5-week survey of maths course is on YouTube
Keith Devlin, of enormous maths MOOC fame, tweeted that his survey course Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible is now available on YouTube. Until now, it had only been available through iTunes University. The course consists of five two-hour lectures, delivered over five weeks. Like Keith’s MOOC, it’s an “intro to maths for grown-ups” course to get people…