It’s odd, the process of waking up. Sometimes you can get out of bed and stumble around for an hour or two, maybe even get dressed and go to work, before your brain does anything to differentiate you from a patient in a highly mobile vegetative state. On other days it seems that your mental…
Fibonacci Grids
I uploaded this video to YouTube last week but I forgot to make a post here. It’s about a moderately interesting fact about fibonacci numbers that David Cushing told me at MathsJam. I generalised it a bit, so I’ve been meaning to write a post for The Aperiodical or do a snappy video or something…
Topology Gossip
Brubeck is a database of topological information, à la the classic Counterexamples in Topology. It contains descriptions of several important topological spaces and properties and the interrelationships between each of them. This is quite interesting. Brubeck, by James Dabbs, is a bit like Number Gossip but for topological spaces: it presents you with a search box…
The Super Subtraction Feat
-or- How I Unofficially Broke The World Record That Never Was In April, a gentleman called B. Sai Kiran became, briefly, internet-famous for doing arithmetic. In Hyderabad, he subtracted a 70-digit number from another in the barest smidgen over a minute – 60.05 seconds, at the second attempt.
Out-of-work economists will probably not turn to bank robbery
Three economists decided to examine bank robbery as an economic activity. They were given access to data from the British Bankers’ Association on the amounts stolen during robberies, pretended to be statisticians for a bit, and came up with some interesting results. They’ve written up their findings in a feature article in the June edition…
Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education Conference 2012
The Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education Conference 2012 will take place on 10 July 2012 at the Royal Society in London.
Draft UK primary mathematics changes for consultation
The UK Government have released a draft primary school Programme of Study for mathematics for consultation. The announcement was much covered in the press, which focused on the ‘back to basics’ approach. The Daily Mail reported that “times tables are to be put back at the heart of the curriculum for children’s first years at…