Category Archive: Mathematics

Functional Drawing at C&!

Last week I taught at the first (year 0) of C&!, the Camp for Algorithmic Math Play. It was a lot of fun working on mathematical play and games with a group of… Continue reading

Let them be

In the previous post on curvahedra spheres, we actually missed an interesting collection of curvahedra balls, as we assumed that every face had at least 3 sides. This makes a lot of sense… Continue reading

Making Spheres

Curvahedra can make all sorts of objects, but some of the most satisfying are spheres, like the classic ball itself (here serving as a Christmas ornament). So what other spheres or near spheres… Continue reading

The Curve in the Curvahedra

These are Curvahedra pieces:They can hook together to make all sorts of geometric objects. For example, take three pieces and make a triangle (or something triangle like with wiggly edges) Taking a close… Continue reading

Eigencurves

Linear algebra is one of my favourite areas of mathematics. Its a simplification but you could say that the things that mathematics does well are small numbers and straight lines. The rest is… Continue reading

Snowflake, Seashell, Star

Alex and I initially met thanks to this blog. He was fact checking for an article that included the Taylor-Socolar aperiodic tiling that I had written up. The general theme of the article… Continue reading

Data Visualisation, from the World Cup to Drugs in Arkansas

This summer I taught a graduate statistics course in data visualisation at the University of Arkansas. As a final project the students had to find a data set, think of questions you could… Continue reading

How to Play Like a Mathematician

This is a vague transcript from memory of a talk I gave at Twitter Math Camp 2014. It was a truly energising event, teacher organised peer professional development. Anyone interested in education, whether… Continue reading

Twelve and the real life problems problem

The number 12, not the most esoteric secret of mathematics. Yet through the under appreciated power of the equals sign it can become 6+6, 3*4, 15-3, 36/3 aall before we add in unusual… Continue reading

The TMC Logo

Collegiate typography parsed into a fractal, with the theme of lots of parts coming together to make the whole. That’s the corporate design spin on the new logo for the Twitter Math Camp,… Continue reading

Form follows functions

Functions are fun to play with. Just watch kids sitting around a graphing calculator. The more math you know the more fun you can have. Even better with the power of computers you… Continue reading

Numbers, letters and exponential growth

Mixing slightly arbitrary abstract systems can be fun. The two systems that nearly everyone has to deal with are our systems for sound (the alphabet) and for quantity and order (numbers). So taking… Continue reading