The etymology of mathematics absolutely fascinates me. The English language is remarkably irregular, but mathematical language is so close to the original Latin and Greek roots that it really can be broken down into constituent parts to derive meanings. Therefore, I really enjoyed a post from Don Steward earlier this year, pointing out that the word …
What’s in a name? (Fractions) Read More »
I had no idea what to blog about today. I spent all morning cleaning out my garage, just sat down to start writing and was clean out of inspiration. Therefore, I thought I’d plump for one of my go-to activities when there’s five minutes to kill at the end of the lesson. I do this …
So here’s a cute idea I was talking to a colleague about yesterday. I think I got this from Johnny Ball when I saw him present at MathsConf3 last March. I’m unsure of any practical applications but it’s a nice bit of maths. Draw a quadratic curve – the simplest one’s just y = x². …
Quadratic crossover Read More »
It’s going to be a quick one today as it’s Friday and I’m shattered! I’ve just got in from work and I’m desperately trying to get this out of the way before my OH finishes work and starts demanding my attention. I’m taking my inspiration from a comment from @marcusbelben on my post about spherical and hyperbolic …
Inspired by a question from the UKMT Intermediate challenge (2016); read the original blog post here. Clock image credit: https://openclipart.org/detail/217064/2-oclock Fermat image public domain, available https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36804
Fermat’s Christmas Theorem Read More »
Today my Year 10s did the Intermediate Maths Challenge. I thought I’d have a go too, but only got as far as Q3 before finding something I wanted to investigate further. The question concerned the sums of pairs of consecutive square numbers – 1² + 2², 2² + 3² … up to 5² + 6², …
I thought Christmas was over…? Read More »
I had a great conversation with my Year 10 set when doing geometric reasoning a couple of weeks ago – they’d done it all before, so we whizzed all the shape and angle properties in about twenty minutes, but I constructed one from the other, much as Euclid built up his ideas in the Elements. …
Why angles in a triangle aren’t always 180 Read More »
While I was reading stuff for yesterday’s post on Egyptian fractions, the name Sierpiński popped up a couple of times – and as his triangle is one of my favourite bits of maths, I thought I’d run with that thread for today’s post. Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński has three fractals named after him: the aforementioned triangle, …
Curves, carpets and sponges – a look at Sierpinski Read More »
(You’re going to have to let me off for using the word “math” in the blog title – “maths” just does not work as a verb). So this month I’m participating in Bloguary over at Staffrm, which as far as I can fathom involves blogging for 29 minutes a day for each of the 29 days …
Math like an Egyptian – five things I’ve learned about Egyptian fractions Read More »
This level was undoubtedly one of my favourites when I played the game as a child, and is responsible for many pizza-related sayings in my house. Unlike the previous two levels, this one is not focused at all on Zoombini characteristics. Instead, the player is tasked with creating the perfect pizza for some very picky …
Zoombini Maths – Have a pizza party! Read More »