Here is a question I was asked: Why is rearranging equations containing square roots on the curriculum for GCSE? What might it be useful for in later life? This is a two-part question, one part of which is dynamite. When I put the question to Twitter, Paul Taylor @aPaulTaylor was the first to take the…
Math/Maths 114: Relatively Prime taster – Chinook
A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released. A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. Due to non-intersecting availability, this week Samuel presents a short podcast alone. He talks about what’s probably been in the news; he gives a taster of the upcoming third episode of Relatively Prime, Chinook:…
Elsevier has made lots more maths articles free to access
Elsevier has just announced in its third open letter to the mathematics community (how much does that sound like a Papal Bull?) that all of the archived material from its “primary mathematics journals” is now free to access. This completes the process begun in April, when they made everything published after 1995 and before 2008 free. From…
Follow Friday
I’m hijacking Katie’s newly-instituted series of posts about who to follow on Twitter with a post about who to follow on Google+. Google+ famously has almost nobody on it. If anyone knows the potential for really interesting exceptions to the word “almost”, it’s mathematicians, so by that mad logic there should be some really interesting…
Penrose fridge magnets kickstarter
Aperiodicity fans, Neil and Heath need your help! Help in the form of money. Don’t worry, you’ll get something cool out of it – a set of dart/kite Penrose tiling fridge magnets. There isn’t much more to it than that. It’s a pretty simple idea, they’re just asking for $5000 to get metal dies made…
Cardboard SKI calculus
I had a spare day yesterday so, rather than clean my house, I made a model of the SKI combinator calculus out of a pizza box. [youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZQMmgElRMI]
NRICH Site has had a facelift
Everyone’s favourite source of excellent maths activities for all ages, NRICH, has been inspired by our change of font and has redesigned their site. It is still full of excellent ideas and teaching resources, as well as puzzles and games. Fans of rounded rectangles will especially like the slick new design and easy-to-use sections for…