Look who I happened to bump into...

If you don't know the history of zero, here's an explainer to get you up to speed with a fascinating story. Really there are two zeros: zero the digit and zero the number. So I start by exploring ancient number systems that had one or the other or both or neither. youtu.be/7jQNTfe-5FM

The greatest hits of tasks by @nathanday.bsky.social 🎉

In #MathsToday*, I introduced Year 12 to the brilliant game Digit Disguises by @davidkbutler.bsky.social. See here: www.adelaide.edu.au/mathslearnin... They really enjoyed it and immediately started coming up with lots of clever strategies. *(Actually #Maths~16DaysAgo, but I've been a bit busy!)

Used @nathanday.bsky.social ’s sum-product(-difference-quotient) tables in an intervention session with Y10 in #MathsToday to support their factorisation of quadratics with negatives. Was really helpful to isolate the step of considering all the sign combos! 🤩 interwovenmaths.com/four-ops-tab...

I'm not sure 'taught and shared' sounds quite enough like 'thought and said' for this title to work, but oh well.

📣 #MathsConf39: The Best That Has Been Taught and Shared with Nathan Day (@nathanday314) Explore all-time great maths tasks, why they work, and how to adapt or design your own to enrich lessons & inspire learners. completemaths.com/community/ma... #UKMathsChat

In #MathsToday, Year 12 tackled some Underground Maths tasks on inequalities. Inequality sets: undergroundmathematics.org/polynomials/... Inequalities for some occasions: undergroundmathematics.org/quadratics/i... I always find with their tasks there's more to them than initially meets the eye.

In #MathsToday, Year 12 looked at some graph intersections and solving some simultaneous equations, and then sketching the graphs!

In #MathsToday, Year 12 and I enjoyed doing some Susan Wall tasks. I particularly enjoyed this one. We matched the graphs up, and then found the coordinates of all the interesting points.

For those unfortunate enough to be starting back tomorrow... Over the summer Duelling Mathematicians has had a bit of an upgrade. Loads of new question types, game statistics, and design tweaks, but the same frenetic music and sound effects. More to come! interwovenmaths.com/_Duels.html

I hope my Year 10s have enjoyed their summer holiday work, which included various options from the likes of @ayliean.bsky.social, @tibees.bsky.social, @elliesleightholm.bsky.social, @meimaths.bsky.social, @nrichmaths.bsky.social, @simonsinghnerd.bsky.social, and @desmos.com. (All links in alt text)

I've done some work on collated my worked examples over the holidays. Here's the database of those I've created over the past few years. Perhaps you can make use of them in your teaching too? kshancock.co.uk/workedexampl... #UKMathsChat

For those unfortunate enough to be starting back tomorrow... Over the summer Duelling Mathematicians has had a bit of an upgrade. Loads of new question types, game statistics, and design tweaks, but the same frenetic music and sound effects. More to come! interwovenmaths.com/_Duels.html

Just gave this a rather significant visual upgrade. It's now quite colourful, matching the textbooks! I've also added in totals, but they tend to be off by a couple of marks from the official ones as they are just the sums of the notional component boundaries. interwovenmaths.com/_GradeBounda...

FYI, I have updated my Edexcel Grade Boundaries page: interwovenmaths.com/_GradeBounda... Some interesting Further Maths component-level boundaries!

Well that's one job from my summer to-do list done! - an updated Islands generator via @desmos.com www.desmos.com/calculator/e... See below for some questions I've used with it!

Calling all Maths teachers! What are some of your all-time great tasks for secondary Maths? Ones that could have their place in any curriculum, one that should be studied in PGCE courses, ones that started whole new genres of tasks... ... or just ones you really like. (see some of mine below)

In Year 10 #MathsToday, we did this series of algebray volume and surface area questions that originated in a lovely Don Steward task. The third row gave nice practice of expanding triple brackets and factorising non-monic quadratics. donsteward.blogspot.com/2014/03/cubo...

In #MathsToday, Year 10 enjoying having a go at this Quadratics Always/Sometimes/Never task (which I did as a card sort in pairs). It was really interesting to tease out the subtleties, look at different edge cases, and keep bringing things back to the graphs.

I think these questions need a tag! Maybe #x^2-7x+10? @ljohns6.bsky.social

Just delivered my first maths workshop at #MathsConf38 and I’m buzzing! Being 10% braver is HARD but so worth it.💪 Thank you to everyone who came along. Keep an eye out for resources and join the challenge! @nathanday.bsky.social has set the bar high! 🔥 #InterweavingMaths #MathsForFun #LoveMaths

I had a great time today at #MathsConf38. I particularly enjoyed @ljohns6.bsky.social's workshop about connecting concepts. At the end we were challenged us to come up with a question featuring the expression 𝑥² − 7𝑥 + 10. Here's what I came up with.

I just made a last minute sign up to attend #MathsConf38! Looking forward to seeing 1 - @stephenfroggatt.bsky.social, 2 - @arithmaticks.bsky.social, 3 - Paul Rodrigo, 4 - @mathsjem.bsky.social, 5 - @ljohns6.bsky.social!

It's Pride Month. I feel like it is important to recognise this in school, especially given recent developments at home and abroad. Here's two ways I'm doing that. LGBTQIA+ Mathematicians (new!): interwovenmaths.com/famous-mathe... Pride Flag Maths activities: interwovenmaths.com/pride-flag-m...

I've made a Core Pure Practice Paper focusing on topics that didn't come up (much) in Edexcel's Paper 1. interwovenmaths.com/Files/_CP2Pr... Made somewhat hastily, so might well contain errors/wacky mark allocations/etc. Written solutions, and possibly also video solutions, to follow later today.

Fine work from the Independent this morning: “King Charles' personal fortune has seen a significant boost, rising by £30 million to £640 million in the past year – an increase of 2000 per cent." One for my next lesson on percentage change…

Today was our Year 11 leavers' day, and I received a copy of 'Mr Day's Quote Book', containing 150 things I said over the last two years of teaching my Year 11 class. Here's just a small selection. (I'll let you try to work out the contexts. Names changed, other than mine.)

In #MathsToday, Year 9 and I looked at some jigsaw ratios, before tackling Don's classic Ducks problem. donsteward.blogspot.com/2016/03/160-...

In #MathsToday, this week I've enjoyed playing a new game I've been working on: Duelling Mathematicians! interwovenmaths.com/duels Two players at the board take turns answering maths questions, with chess clock-style timers. The sounds/music are the best bit! More topics being added soon...

A couple of photos from a half term trip to Edinburgh.

Can you reconstruct the method used to calculate these figures? (Seen at the Museum on The Mound, Edinburgh: museumonthemound.com)

Inspired by @studymaths.bsky.social's invaluable mathsbot.com/gcse/boundar..., here's something I've thrown together for Edexcel A Level Maths/Further Grade Boundaries by paper: interwovenmaths.com/files/gradeb... #ALevelMaths

Interwoven Combined Probabilities, with Equations, Trig, Vectors, Sequences, Histograms, Straight Line Graphs, Angles and Surds. These worked well with Y11 today who were looking at probability trees and hoping to revise other topics! #MathsToday #ukmathschat interwovenmaths.com/probability

Here's a nice Product Rule for Counting question.

In #MathsToday, Y13 FM were introduced to their first Further Stats 1 'Wrogn' paper. They had to identify and correct the error in each answer to get a set of model solutions. I felt it worked nicely as a way to gently introduce FS1 past papers, which we only finished the content for last week.

By no means an original idea, but here's my attempt at a quadratics completion table. When doing this in lesson, I gave out fully blank grids, and did one row at a time together as a class, giving a different starting box each time. It worked pretty well. interwovenmaths.com/quadraticsta...

For two seasons, I taught in the evenings at the Nottingham Forest academy. These are a couple of the football-related tasks I made in that time. - A completion league table with negatives and equations, - A logic puzzle with fractions and percentages. interwovenmaths.com/football

Very excited to be at @ttradioofficial.bsky.social in Manchester on March 1st, along with other Maths folks including @arithmaticks.bsky.social, @studymaths.bsky.social, @mrtaylormaths2.bsky.social, @draustinmaths.com, @giftedhko.bsky.social. Tickets available here: www.ttradio.org/teachers-tal...

A new half term means a new mathematician for the booklet cover pages 😄

In #MathsToday, I did some organising for next week's school 'Christmaths Carols' sing-along. The set list is slowly growing, thanks to songs from @icecolbeveridge.mathstodon.xyz.ap.brid.gy, @alisonkiddle.bsky.social and @realityminus3.bsky.social. Suggestions and contributions very much welcomed!

This is a beautiful post from Tom Francome about a wonderful project to digitise Don Steward's rough notes. blog.lboro.ac.uk/cmc/2024/11/... I have loved just reading through the notes over the last few days and already grabbed quite a few things to use in lessons. @lborodme.bsky.social

Here's a Mechanics task on objects on slopes with friction. It's a bit tricky. There's some nice trigonometry you can do in (d) and (h). I think I've got the answers right, but I'm not sure. I'd love it if you tried it out and let me know what you think.

Looking forward to seeing @alisonkiddle.bsky.social, @mscroggs.co.uk, @treacherousbuzz.bsky.social and Colin Wright with Year 12 at Maths Inspiration (@mathsinspiration.bsky.social) in Nottingham tomorrow!

In #MathsToday these diagramless circle theorems questions came in handy when the new printers weren't yet up and running!

Just beat my high score on the incredibly addictive game Factor7️⃣2️⃣ antonmakesgames.itch.io/factor72 My dream remains to completely clear the grid!

Here's some tasks on CP1's geometric configurations of systems of three linear equations. I think they're a lot of fun. (Diagrams taken from a textbook. I can't remember which.) Tasks: interwovenmaths.com/files/_Geome... Answers: interwovenmaths.com/files/_Geome... #ALevelMaths

A: "These two pentagons are similar" B: "These two pentagons are regular" A and B are deceptively similar-looking sentences. One of them describes a relationship (A), while the other describes a shared property (B). Here are some more examples to think about. What others can you come up with?

In #MathsToday we were looking at roots of unity. I made use of the amazing new Desmos @desmos.bsky.social Complex Numbers features to make a visualisation of the sum of the roots of unity being 0: www.desmos.com/calculator/d...

In #MathsToday, part c of this question caught everybody out, and not for the reason I was intending when I wrote it! (The time when answering the question was about 3pm.)