Also of potential interest to Big #mathsjam folk & other maths fans: don't forget to submit recent maths stuff ready for December's Carnival of Mathematics: https://aperiodical.com/carnival-of-mathematics/

Fabulous weekend at Big #mathsjam, sorry to have to leave before the end. I love the little bubble of maths joy I get to be part of.

Delighted with the reaction to my #mathsjamjam song about the shortage of proportional representation literature in Essex, D'Hondt Book Lack In Ongar. (The jam was, as always, fabulous. Good work, musicians :-))

Important information for anyone coming to #mathsjam by train: Milton Keynes C is an anagram of Lemony Snicket.

I think a new Rembrandt would have been more impressive.

It's Big MathsJam Eve!

I wrote a song! (This is the first of the 30 I've challenged myself to write by next November.) https://makertube.net/w/fVsXRjVqM2VNYK8nJLXbxg

Un, un, dos, cinc, catorse, quaranta-dos... These are some of the Catalan numbers.

Today I think I've fixed two bugs in the @numbas LTI tool that have been bothering me for over a year. They were both due to network problems, in a way, and were really hard to reproduce. I'm so glad I've finally worked them out. not even once. Race conditions:

Please join my campaign to call the Thue-Morse sequence the Morse-Thue sequence half the time.

*MathsJam Klaxon* It's nearly time for November's MathsJams! Most take place this coming Tuesday (18th Nov). You can find your nearest one at the link below, but if you exist inside or near a quadrilateral with Oxford, Northampton, Bedford, & St. Albans at its vertices, your nearest MathsJam is […]

I've been looking at some more family history. My paternal grandfather's middle name was Downie, after his mum's birth name. According to familysearch.org -- which is, of course, a little dubious -- we're plausibly related to the Aberdeenshire Dauneys, who are descended from Sir Payn d'Aunay […]

Little history of maths question: do you know of any old examples of mathematical publications using colour? Before 1950, say. Byrne's Euclid is the obvious example. I don't consider a painting to be "a publication". I mean printed pages, really.

11yo had his first water polo match in the full pool. Sadly, they lost 19-1, conceding a goal roughly every 101 seconds. (He's OK about it, wants to learn what he can do better. They kept trying to the end. Proud of him.)

If you see an interesting & mathsy article (blog, video, podcast ep, whatever) posted in November don't forget to submit it to the Carnival of Maths in time for December's edition! https://aperiodical.com/carnival-of-mathematics/

My songwriting podcast left me SHOOK to learn that America, by Simon and Garfunkel... doesn't rhyme. That's a song I've listened to thousands of times and could recite by heart, but I'd never noticed that. Wow.

There's an old saying in software that the first 90% is easy, it's the second 90% that's hard. I feel like LLMs make the first 70% easy and the second 140% impossible.

*through gritted teeth* What do you notice? What do you wonder? (The chart is a few years old, but the punchline is still valid.)

Oo, thank you to the library users of Ireland, whose collective borrowing of my books in 2024 has earned me nearly five euros. (I genuinely love this, it's like finding money in the sofa.)

A perfect Kevin and Perry moment at Harvest Festival yesterday, sitting next to some family friends. Their Y4 passed by and hissed "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU, MUM AND DAD... oh, hi, Colin!" (I think it was "you've embarrassed me by sitting at the front" rather than a genuine threat.)

In case this facade of competent professionalism has you fooled, let it be known that my brain has been saying "ha ha, told you you were stupid" to me all day after a minor, but annoying, screw-up in my data. I can fight it, it's just harder work than I could do with at the moment.

Among hills I will die on today, conferences and meetings don't have attendees, they have attenders. I am doing the attending, not having the attending done to me.

[uspol] That is NOT what I will remember Dick Cheney for.

Interesting question from 11yo Young Bill: what's the 'average' of a circle and a square? After a couple of questions, he clarified that he meant in terms of distance from their common centre, and he (quite impressively, imo) built the thing in Geogebra. I've […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Another kid told me that if you walk around its perimeter three times backwards at midnight, it'll tile periodically.

"Actually, I don't mind if you call me Frankenstein. I'm more bothered that you think of me as a monster."

"This topologically curious shape will henceforth be called a monogon," decided Tom, unilaterally.

Just saw a reference to a football chant from the 1990s where Millwall fans taunted the Walsall faithful with "you've only got three L's".

Lrt : I still have traumatic flashbacks to a kids' TV programme about the time a disco band played a New York punk club. I get the CBeebies CBGB Bee Gees heebie-jeebies.

If anyone was thinking of getting a SIGNED copy of The Mathematicians' Library for someone for Christmas, I have 42 copies ready and raring to go: £25 (+ £5 delivery in the UK unless you can pick it up from Milton Keynes). As always, a boost of this post would be much appreciated 😁

Thought: maybe I could build a yak-shaving machine to automate the process.

What Abbotsbury Road needs in that empty unit is a restaurant selling burgers, kebabs and pizza IN THAT ORDER.

Disappointed by Grandmaster Flash's performance last night. I was hoping for a much higher standard of chess.

Tired: reducing the expression to one proved in a known theorem. Wired: nostalgebra

half-term, n.: the period between two half-terms.

#beachspectres update: I'm taking it very seriously.

"... --- .-. .-. -.-- / .. .----. .-.. .-.. / - -.-- .--. . / - .... .- - / .- --. .- .. -." said Tom, remorsefully.

I absolutely love this stance: https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~kuipers/opinions/no-military-funding.html

Proper vanishing point! (Don't worry, I checked carefully for trains.)

How to Start Exploring Maths in your Gallery, Library, Archive or Museum – a Resource for Maths Week England "The resource uses a story-first approach to promote richer experiences and telltale signs that maths is nearby, and highlights things that have been found to be necessary prerequisites […]

I was heckling in Gaelic late one night Because his scansion was lousy and his rhymes were trite He came into the crowd (which I thought unwise) And suddenly, to no-one's surprise We did stramash We did the Mòd stramash

During our #MathsConf39 session, Jason and I revealed our new project: The History and Maths in Education Network (historyand.mathsy.space) which aims to facilitate discussion and sharing of resources & ideas amongst folks interested in using history themes to enrich maths education. 🏛️🎓 #MathsToday

Asked my pal from Somerset if he knew anyone capable of taking the square root of -𝑟². "I are!" he said. That's a proof by country diction.

I desperately want to believe that the Poole Town/Weymouth derby is referred to as el jurásico.

I came across this great app called Aubin, "an autism friendly travel companion". http://aubin.app/ The main purpose is it's a journey planner. You can tell it things like how much you prefer different kinds of transport, how much time you want to wait at a station, whether you'd prefer a […]

"Sorry, I was thinking about a new song listing all of Ted's faults" said Tom, distractedly.

Apparently theres a new wave of people joining mastodon, and with them a new wave of self-appointed cops "welcoming" them with long lists of mostly fictitious "rules" they need to follow. This is a social media platform, with many of different ways to use it. It's fine. Mostly, just try to be […]

I've just retrieved my ca. 1985 ZX Spectrum+ from the mathemattic cupboard and realised that my watch isn't just 20,000 times more powerful, it also has a better screen resolution and (adjusted for inflation) cost half as much.

Dogs are allowed back on the beach. Pete is delighted!