"Consider a spherical ski jumper in a vacuum." #WinterOlympics2026

Happy Valentines Day. Made this in 2018, and still love it. Loving Triangles.

We've a few tickets spare for the National Cipher Challenge event at Bletchley on 4th March. With speakers including Rob Eastaway. If you or your school took part in the competition in the Autumn, email us at [email protected] with your details so we can see if we can fit you in.

Had a go at the great-granny knot in TikZ, @cubesart.bsky.social

And in the second semester we will discuss whether our problem-2-category should be lax.

A fun Sunday activity: designing and printing some more impossible cylinders. Here is one I call “Division by Zero.” 🤣

username checks out

I usually see these reposted by a mathematician (you know who you are!) with a comment along the lines of "and also in mathematics". So I fully misread that first phrase! In my defence, up to the first comma then "and also in math" works pretty well. #mathsky #ITeachMaths

#EngvWal a bit one-sided so I had time to create this: notes.mathforge.org/notes/publis...

Well, that's my weekend sorted! #geometrypuzzle #mathsky #UKMathsChat

Made a stab at explaining intersecting planes in Y12 Further Maths, wasn't sure it was all that clear, then turned round to see that my students had made their own version. #MathsToday

Wasn't someone looking for examples of graphs for #CoreMaths recently?

And it shows some obvious ways in which TV shows can do harm - both to individuals, many of whom were hoping this would finally 'prove' they were smart, and to society, when the myths are upheld by this kind of lazy and thoughtless design.

Did you catch the new Channel 4 show #SecretGenius last night? Alan Carr &Susie Dent teamed up with #Mensa to set puzzles for participants. The show helped to illuminate some of the issues with discrimination/inequality that are surfaced by trying to ‘measure’ intelligence. Some thoughts..

Still in ratio table mode. I remembered this @mathforge.org ;-)

My instantaneous reaction: a) this is so cool b) can I get that as a poster? c) was that drawn using the knots package in TikZ? I'll bet that many folks share (a) and (b), but (c) might be a bit niche ... #mathsky #UKMathsChat #ITeachMaths

So I'm growing increasingly in favour of "proof by generic example" as a teaching tool, rather than proof by algebraic manipulation. I think it makes the result more concrete. #ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat #MathsToday

One of my students brought this to my attention: www.cipherchallenge.org/111483-2/ Fame at last! To clarify, I wrote all the solutions in my collection. @cipher-challenge.bsky.social

New practice grid on rearranging scientific formulae added to the website this morning. Download it and much more at www.draustinmaths.com #UKMathsChat #MathsToday

#ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat #mathsky

Teaching matrix mult, noticed that I mentally pick up the rows in the first and align them with the columns in the second before multiplying and adding, realised that that is actually the wrong way round: it makes more sense to pick up the columns in the second and align with the rows in the first.

But the trolls in Norway are so friendly now, and hardly ever eat people. Even if they got trip-trapity over their rickety-rackety bridge.

Eventually, everything ends up as an n-category.

What bothers me about Archimedean Solids is that I can't visualize the part that was removed from the Platonic parent shape. Here's a solution for the cuboctahedron: build the Platonic Solid parent cube around it and notice the shape of the negative space+

Trying to figure out which LaTeX package this is from.

In #MathsToday, picking off the little topics of Further Maths with Y13. Started with mean functions, ended with improper integrals. Last example was integrating 1/x from -1 to 1 so I got to finish the lesson with the immortal line: "The limit does not exist" #ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat

I am all for revolution. Rip it up. Start again. Two GCSEs. One compulsory numeracy, one optional. We won’t get it but it’s the biggest miss if we don’t. I’m sick of killing kids souls with maths they will never understand. I didn’t come into teaching to make people feel stupid Rant ends.

The MAT is dead, long live the TMUA. (Which always sounds in my head like "The Metropolitan Transit Authority") #UKMathsChat #ALevelMaths

I've just signed this. Even though we vote for an individual and not a party, their party affiliation represents most of what they stand for - that's what people vote on, not an individual's personality

Anyone else completely unaware of different definitions of STEM?

“The difference between mathematicians and physicists is that after physicists prove a big result they think it is fantastic but after mathematicians prove a big result they think it is trivial.” —Lucien Szpiro

Phew a lot of trouble comes from the belief that maths is a big list of problems and a solution method for each one.

One for the maths teachers out there.... Does anybody use booklets AND like them / have had a positive experience? Looking to reach out and find out more.. any 'sharing' of post welcome... If that's what you do on here 🤣 @themathsbazaar.bsky.social

Does anyone have or know of an introduction to game theory course or book suitable for secondary/high school students? Thanks. #UKMathsChat #mathsky #ALevelMaths

It is important to recognise that technical language (such as in use in mathematics) is designed to help *those already inside the subject*, and not those who are trying to get in. Learning proper terminology and learning proper concepts are not necessarily best done simultaneously. #UKMathsChat

I would like some appreciation of the fact that I *haven't* mentioned category theory in this thread. But, honestly, if we just taught category theory explicitly in school maths then it would all be soooo much simpler!

Talking Maths in Public is the UK's network for maths communicators. We run a conference every 2 years, and in the years between (including 2026!) we have a six-episode podcast of conversations about maths comm. Watch this space for the new series, and visit https://tmip.uk/podcast to submit ideas!

Look what I've found, bookmarking gladly🥳 (er, although I mostly have failed solving her geometry puzzles back there at Twitter 😅) bsky.app/profile/math...

By the way, why not make your New Year’s resolution be to start sharing little things that went well in your maths lessons using #MathsToday? Whenever I make a habit of this, it always makes me feel more positive about my job. It’s lovely to scroll through and see what everyone else is doing too.

I'm very sorry to report that the only lasting solution for education writ large is to 10x the number of teachers in the system and pay them what they're worth

Was thinking of some traitors themed lessons, maybe basic probability? How about, finding the probability that a faithful picking someone to accuse (uniformly at random) happens to pick another faithful? #UKMathsChat #Traitors #mathsky

TIL that there is a special cake for Epiphany called the King's¹ cake, and it's *this* cake that has the bean in it. ¹not actually sure how many Kings, so it might be the Kings' cake. #hogfather

Buying hot dogs today. The prices per 100g on the signs are a bit blurred, they were 27.7p per 100g for the jar of 12 and 43.4p per 100g for the jar of 6. After staring at them for some time, and using a calculator to double check, I did buy the jar of 12 as it was the cheaper option. #UKMathsChat

Has anyone experimented with scoring points in SET? Playing with people of different experience levels and thinking about how to slow down the quicker players to give the others a chance to build that experience. How about scoring a set by 1pt for every attribute that differs? #UKMathsChat #mtbos

Should've taken a picture of the Christmas tree this morning. Then I could've made a real-life version of that "Xmas - Ymas - Zmas" joke.

Hogfather is 99p as an ebook at the moment. The publisher must've heard about @teakayb.mathsy.space 's readalong.

Waterstones in Oxford has recently moved across town (nearer the Westgate, further from Blackwell's - which they now own). Some things didn't change in the move. They still stock Good Books. Strong recommend for Christmas.

New blog post about the history of my collection of geometric visualisation puzzles Jenga Views. BONUS: I've added even more puzzles! cc @joeldavidhamkins.bsky.social davidkbutler.xyz/2025/12/11/j...