Thinking of my father who died a year ago today. I am grateful for this lovely obituary written by his friend Christopher McCall KC (admittedly with some input from me). www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may...

Just finished another day working on the audiobook of Huge Numbers. This was one of the challenges past Richard threw at me today…

Really fun thread and piece at the end!

Why I am I being bombarded with adverts telling me to apply for a job as a prison warden? I can't imagine any job in the whole world I would be worse at. And I can't think of anything I might have clicked on to give the algorithm or AI the idea this could be a good fit.

There are around 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. Where might we find bigger numbes than this? In speed-cubing competitions, solvers not only solve Rubik’s classic 3×3×3 cube (with its >10^18 possible scrambles), but other puzzles too. 1/4

I’ve just finished “The Man Who Died Seven Times” by Yasuhiko Nishizawa - a murder mystery set within a time loop. Absolutely tons of fun if, like me, you are a fan of both genres. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man...

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Here we go! Narrating the audiobook version of Huge Numbers. Photos by brilliant producer Cathy who is being extremely patient while I stumble over the same sentence for the fifth time…

Golly. The World Record for the 3x3 Rubik’s cube is now under 3 seconds - and way under it too. Congratulations to Teodor Zajder! youtu.be/IR9vSoLUsoA?...

Blimey - relieved, but have to feel for Nepal here, after coming within one shot of beating England. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

Getting some funny looks waiting for my daughter’s dance class, as I attempt to follow this tutorial on pronouncing non-pulmonic consonants. youtu.be/4e6DLwEVb6I?...

The Mayan Long Count Calendar is a truly thing of wonder. Its basic units are one day (“Kin”), twenty days “Winal”, the “Tun” year of 360 days, the 7200 day “Katun”, and 144,000 day “Baktun” (just under 400 years). [1/3]

I am still delivering regular outreach sessions at schools, colleges, and elsewhere, even though my role as Holgate Session Leader for the London Mathematical Society @londmathsoc.bsky.social lapsed in 2025. Instead I have this badge from @stemlearning.bsky.social

I've just finished reading The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social. A highly enjoyable account of a line of thought - cybernetics - which was historically squeezed out, first by the birth of computing... [1/2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Una...

“What’s Pythagoras’s trauma?” my 11yo son just asked me.

I loved "Venomous Lumpsucker" by @nedbeauman.bsky.social. Superficially different, but I kept thinking of Dr Strangelove - laugh-out-loud absurdism, over an apocalyptically dark centre. I listened to the audiobook which was terrifically read by John Hastings. chireviewofbooks.com/2022/07/19/v...

Yes, I've been quiet on here. There have been a lot of changes on @breakingmath.bsky.social If you follow my personal and the show Instagrams, you might find a soft-launch of what's to come. 😉 No show this week, but there will be a new episode soon with all the details! Xo, A

That feeling where you agree to narrate the audio version of your book, and then remember that you decided to include extracts from the Southern African clicking language !Xóõ. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFE6...

Last week was a good one for me in terms of learning how AI can support my work. A couple of days after posting the linked thread, I faced an essentially identical scenario again: a search and replace job which was too involved for the vanilla search & replace tool. 1/5 bsky.app/profile/rich...

Fun stuff! I’ve done color modding with 3x3s through 11x11s. Mostly, I make “solvable” cubes with nonstandard color schemes, but if you use two cubes and don’t mind ambiguity, there are a lot of fun possibilities. Here are a couple 3-color 9x9s. I call them Ice-Nine and Hades cube.

Look carefully at this cube and you’ll see why you couldn’t ever solve it. (More details in alt text.)

I've been experimenting with AI, and while there's a lot that is very cool and powerful, it is still unpredictable. You're right that it is dangerous to assume it will keep everything the same that you want to be the same. My favorite example of this was when I scanned in some paper recipes and

The single biggest thing (in cost terms) I’ve changed my mind about is UK tuition fees. Dreadful system, need to scrap it.

I think the best strategy here would be to compare the changed version to the original *without* using AI. If it's TeX or MarkDown files, maybe "diff" can help? This way you can still have AI do the work, but you can also be confident that it didn't add "the lecturer is stupid" to your notes.

I think the AI halfway-house is something like “Write me a regular expression that I can run that will replace…”. (I feel the main thing I’ve learned from @seehuhn.bsky.social is that “Write me some code that will do X” is a much better way to use AI than “Do X’’.)

Same. I need ownership, both of the mistakes and the things that work well. The former are a learning opportunity, the latter can be a source of pride - but only when your own intellectual effort has primacy. The job is soulless and mechanical otherwise. And I wouldn't be earning my salary, either.

I had the opportunity to use AI to speed up my work yesterday - and I didn't take it. I am updating some old lecture notes, and needed to replace an obolete typesetting command with a new command. Essentially a search & replace job, but... 1/5

Just enough snow this morning for a snowman.

If you stare at this movie it looks like nothing is happening, but then you notice groups of lines appearing and disappearing. No, you're not on drugs - it's math.

This evening’s viewing with the children: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. A delightful, hilarious, and highly creative stop motion mockumentary. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Much of the Stranger Things final season saw me trying to remember what the hell happened in the previous episode. Too many people splitting into different groups, in different worlds, simultaneously trying different plans against an assortment of dangers. But, fair play, the finale was terrific.

The @newscientist.com’s Alison Flood looks ahead to science books coming out in 2026 and spots one I’m also feeling excited about.

The audiobooks I have listened to this year, turning my commute and daily chores into opportunities for enlightenment and adventure. Thank you for the good times @aptshadow.bsky.social @edyong209.bsky.social @annleckie.com @gregegansf.bsky.social @davidmcwecon.bsky.social

Many congratulations to @bobbyseagull.bsky.social MBE!

Tim Paulden's thexmaspuzzles.com (FKA the Royal Statistical Society Christmas Quiz, now in association with Chalkdust magazine) are keeping the family quiet this festive period.

Actual mathematician quotes: "It was my lot to plant the harpoon of algebraic topology into the body of the whale of algebraic geometry" - Solomon Lefschetz "It was my fate to implant the electrode of arithmetic geometry in the pleasure center of algebraic topology." - Jack Morava

Pleased that England managed to claw one back. Astonishing to think this is the first time that Joe Root (aged 34 with 13000 test runs) has ever won a test match in Australia. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

Carol of the Bells in # Kyiv subway. Voices of the Embassies of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom came together to perform Shchedryk in the Kyiv metro as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. Thankful to everyone who stands with us!

Pleased with my Christmas decoration purchase.

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

A terrific night at Northern Ballet's Nutcracker last night, full of magic and beauty. It's packed with terrific tunes, alongside some truly spectacular dance sequences. Though obviously the highlight was my daughter dazzling in the crucial role of second smallest member of the mouse battalion.

Things I have been waiting for for a long time: England to win the Ashes away & Leeds to get trams. Both prospects as distant as they ever were. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A line from Flanders and Swann pops into my head: “They argue with umpires, they cheer when they’ve won, and they practice beforehand which ruins the fun.”

The European Mathematical Society (EMS) connects mathematicians across Europe and beyond. Join to support: 🤝 Cooperation between mathematicians 🧑‍🏫 Colleagues in difficult circumstances 📣 A stronger voice for mathematics euromathsoc.org/individual-m... #Mathematics #EMS

A friend just gave me "The Mathematicians' Library" - early xmas gift. It's a beautiful looking tour of great books of mathematics from history. Lovely reproductions. Can't wait to properly read it. amzn.to/4iICuo5

George Boole died on this day in 1864. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_... His biographer Des MacHale left these flowers at his grave today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Des_Mac...

This morning I asked my cricket-crazy sons whether they wanted an update on the Ashes. They said no. Very wise.

“Those two are dating right? No, they used to be but now… no wait actually they’re brother and sister aren’t they. Hang on Winona Ryder is that guy’s mother?” Me watching the new season of Stranger Things and realising I have no memory of the relationships between the characters.

🏅 The 2025 Fermat Prize goes to Vesselin Dimitrov and Vlad Vicol for major advances in number theory, Diophantine geometry, and the analysis of fluid mechanics and turbulence. 🔗 euromathsoc.org/news/2025-fe... #FermatPrize #Mathematics #NumberTheory #FluidMechanics

Haha amazing. I personally love the idea that we can’t actually tell which of i or -i we meant when we named one of them, that they are forever indistinguishable like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. To me, that’s deliciously silly. Also this is the very reason why complex conjugation is even a thing.