Long read, but well worth it. #UKMathsChat #ITeachMaths #ALevelMaths

Morning all. There is an account called "Rob Southern fan" using a picture of Jack Brown as it's profile pic that's reposting and commenting on lots of my posts. I've blocked the account and would appreciate you doing the same. 🙂

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-... The headline on the article on the BBC currently reads: "South Africa ease to seven-try win over pointless Wales" which feels a bit harsh.

tom lehrer nerds, they put his live Australian performances - a rare 1960 release - on Spotify et al a few days. No new songs, but new intros. @sarahweinman.com open.spotify.com/album/2FhxMZ...

Proof that the vikings got as far as Japan.

Cold caller: I'm calling from your telephone provider. Me: You haven't said who my telephone provider is. CC: *silence* Me: Would you like to guess? CC: *hangs up*

I know we aren't supposed to be opinionated or political but I spent 20 mins explaining how generative AI actually works (vs old fashioned search engines) and trying to radicalise some y7s against ChatGPT

New post, on why people shouldn't 'never-skill' themselves with AI: kucharski.substack.com/p/dont-never...

But it does turn out to be a good example of *weak invariance*!

Quick request for all the teachers out there who love the National Cipher Challenge. We will hold our 25th prizegiving at Bletchley Park in early 2027. Which of the following dates is best? 10th February (before half term) or 4th March (after half term).

This was an interesting one. First instinct: Agg Invariance. But the obvious way with that is to shrink the yellow hexagon to a dot, and edge cases aren't everyone's cup of invariant tea. #geometrypuzzle #ITeachMaths #UKMathsChat

In the group chat: "The UK's effective constitution is a game of Mornington Crescent[^0] that got out of hand." [^0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_(game)

Studied the game of nim with a student today. Although I already knew the strategy, I didn't know *why* it is what it is until I tried to figure out how to get it to appear in a natural way. Teaching is the best way to learn! #MathsToday #ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat

Karabasis is 99p as an ebook. #CheapEbooks

Now we know how "Belgium" became a swear word. #WorldCup26 #BELvsSEN #HHG2G

Tell me again why hydration breaks are so bad?

"Mathematicians aren't those who find maths easy, they are those who enjoy how hard it gets." (I heard that from @standupmaths.bsky.social - would love to know if it's originally from him) #ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat

ML good, LLM bad. It's nice to be reminded of the former of these when so often I'm drowning in the output of the latter.

I got carried away and made a thing... Testers welcome! #alevelmaths #mathstoday #alevelrevision #mathsrevision

I generally have a favourable opinion of Nordic countries. Here's one reason why. I just got an email from a big company with the opener: "Norway law requires businesses to send reminders every so often to people with recurring subscriptions to help them stay on top of their accounts."

Back when I was a Head of Sixth Form advising students on university applications I never imagined that the major challenge 10 years later would be trying to guess which university departments are likely to close and which subjects might be abolished

What I love about this most is the absolute surety that I have that there will be a paper on the arXiv within the year that makes use of this terminology. It will probably be something like: "A proof that the 'Stones are (6,7)-Olivian"

Such an odd mindset. "We coped in the 70s!" Yeah but that was 50 yrs ago, don't you want things to be better for your children and grandkids?!?

Finally, a conspiracy theory I can wholeheartedly commit to. Although, actually, maybe it's the other way round. Attenborough is a penguin stooge sent to persuade us to STOP DESTROYING THEIR HOMES. Nah, that's too far-fetched. As you were with the people in penguin costumes.

We could make this a nation-wide research project. We just need a university maths department to sign off on it. *looks at @oxfordmathematics.bsky.social hopefully*

It was inevitable, wasn't it🙄 Of course the Telegraph would run with something like this👇 So let's remove some of the rose-tinted spectacles and also look at some of that data comparing 1976 with modern heat waves Because the 1976 nostalgia porn is wearing a bit thin at this stage 🧵1/23

For a moment I thought it was going to be an actual dilemma.

Looking for a cool library space? If you are looking for a cool library space during the hot weather, here are some tips of where you can go. You can get local information about cooler spaces at any of our libraries from staff when you arrive. https://bit.ly/4g2NKfR

“The whole point of AI tools is that I no longer need to retain information in my biological memory. My biological memory is for other things now. Important things. Like my Netflix password” 😂 inpreparation.substack.com/p/opinion-i-...

Suggestions, please, for Maths lessons for hot weather! Such as, calculating volume by counting (ice) cubes. Or, measuring the rate of change of volume of a hemisphere atop a cone. #MathsToday #ITeachMaths #UKMathsChat

Exciting news: I've got a new book out! Co-authored with @sparksmaths.bsky.social, Why Don't Rabbits Rule the World? is a dive into some ways mathematics makes things work in the real world. Buy your copy now! uk.bookshop.org/p/books/why-...

This is going to be my response when asked to do anything this week.

Here are a few more curved origami pieces I made. Technically, I made them so the crease lies in the same plane. But if I make the strips narrow enough relative to the object's size, you can get the over-and-under behavior to work pretty well. I could have made all of these except the 5₁ knot

"Your calculator is broken and will no longer do trig calculations. cos(1°) = 0.999848 to 6sf. Calculate cos(7°)." #MathsToday #ALevelMaths #ITeachMaths

If you're looking for a football-related novel, Unseen Academicals is 99p as an ebook at the moment. Carrot as a referee ... not sure he'd get a visa to the US, though.

Two different figure-eight knots made with curved origami. The blue one has a fold angle of 90°, and the purple has a fold angle of 60°. The latter can be made with one strip of paper. The former required two.

It's one of those irregular verbs, isn't it. a. I vibe-coded an amazing program. b. You couldn't be bothered to look beyond the first page of search results. c. He, she, or it used the plagaristic environment-destroying lying machine.

Marmite? Love it or Hate it? I'm collecting some (unserious) data for teaching purposes. If you have a spare minute, please fill out this anonymous opinion poll for me: forms.gle/M5C91iQxiWYC... It is a short list of (likely) polarising preference questions.

I got 29, with about 5 "not sure"s (I'm not sure which Austen's I've read, for example). Then subtract 10 from that because one of them was in French and a set text. And subtract 500 from the validity of the list because it had no Pratchett at all.

Galloping Gertie, The Millenium Bridge, and - it turns out - a small pedestrian bridge in Oxfordshire. Time to update those slides on resonance¹. ¹Yes, I know. It's for illustration, not rigorous analysis. #UKMathsChat #ALevelMaths #ITeachMaths www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Raising a glass to Richmal Crompton and Matryn Jarvis. (No reason, other than the drink reminded me of listening to him reading her stories)

In #MathsToday, spent some time looking at notation - what makes for good notation and bad notation. Even what might be our favourite notation! All in preparation for introducing the most important piece of notation: the exponential form of a complex number. #ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat

Something I would like to see (thinking about the Leiden declaration) is a declaration on teaching resources - including apps & websites - as to whether genAI has been used in their creation. #UKMathsChat

Unlocking justice is £15.99 on kobo today (RRP is £22). #CoreMaths #UKMathsChat @chadtopaz.bsky.social

Wanted to see how much @chadtopaz.bsky.social 's new book costs. Intrigued by the prospect of a sale from the publishers. Not too sure the discount is really offering much, here. #CoreMaths

I recommend this to maths teachers - it does explicitly say it's for the whole mathematical community. I'm going to sign (once I can figure out if I have an ORCID id) #UKMathsChat #ALevelMaths #ITeachMaths #mathsky

This, to me, encapsulates "mathematical behaviour". The answer isn't the end. It never was. It was only ever a prompt to get us to engage more with the ideas. (Also, bookmarking this quote. Might need it someday.)

For anyone else whose waking thought this morning was "oh fudge, planning my lessons - that's what I meant to do this half term!". #ALevelMaths #UKMathsChat #ITeachMaths #MathsToday

Posted! And categorised. notes.mathforge.org/notes/publis... Note: this page links to solutions, but doesn't contain the solution. #geometrypuzzle