You're reading: Posts Tagged: graph

Prime Run

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted May 30, 2022

Here’s a game I’ve been trying to make for a while.

For a while I’ve had a hunch that there’s fun to be had in moving between numbers by using something related to the prime numbers.

Over the years I’ve tried out a few different ideas, but none of them ever worked out – they were either too easy, too hard, or just not interesting. This time, I think I’ve found something close enough to the sweet spot that I’m happy to publish it.

Prime Run is a game about adding and subtracting prime numbers. You start at a random number, with a random target. Your goal is to reach the target, by adding or removing any prime factor of your current number.

Axes to Axes

By Colin Beveridge. Posted May 19, 2013

In which the intrepid maths-crime-fighting duo of Gale and Beveridge find themselves thrust back to a time before people could do maths properly.

It had been a quiet night at the Aperiodical police station. Apart from a few cases of broken scheduling in Excel formulas – nothing a bit of TIME() in the cells wouldn’t put right – there was nothing.

At 11pm, the phone rang. I looked at Sergeant Gale. Sergeant Gale pointedly looked at the phone, raised an eyebrow, and returned to his sudoku.

“Maths Police, bad graphs department. Constable Beveridge speaking, how can I help?”

Seeking election-themed graph blunders

By Katie Steckles. Posted May 1, 2013

Since we’d like to write a funny post about it, if you’ve been sent any literature for the upcoming local elections in the UK (or indeed, from the past or from other elections around the world) which contains a graph or chart of questionable rigor, we want to know about it.

As an example, Colin Beveridge sent us this classic from his doormat:

We’ll be awarding bonus points for inaccurate pie charts, exaggerated/meaningless bar sizes, the complete absence of axis label or scale, the use of ‘Can’t win here!’ and any other sneaky/incompetent features. Email your submissions to root@aperiodical.com, and watch out for a roundup post if we collect a sizeable pile.