The Flying Colours Maths blog has been running posts twice weekly since 2012, covering maths from the basics to… well, the most advanced stuff I have a clue about.
Here they all are, sorted by date. Some day, other ways to filter them will be possible.
Dear Uncle Colin, I have a question I can’t make sense of: “It takes 3 bricklayers four hours to lay 4200 bricks. How long would it take 2 bricklayers to lay 3150 bricks?” I can never figure out when to multiply and when to divide! Markscheme Obtusely Recommends Taking A Ratio Hi, MORTAR, and thank …
A physicist. A calculator. The Mathematical Ninja’s face - what could be seen of it - was more snarl than feature. It’s quite tricky to hiss something that doesn’t have any sibilant consonants, but they hissed all the same: “The cube root of 13? You don’t need a calculator for that.” The student, …
Dear Uncle Colin, I know you don’t ask for any money for your incessant blogging, and I’ve already bought Cracking Mathematics and The Maths Behind - how can I possibly repay you for your work? - Charities Helping Resist Inequality, Serving To Massively Ameliorate Society Hi, CHRISTMAS, …
I realised today I’ve been advising my students… not wrong, exactly, but imprecisely. Capriciously. Unmathematically. Even through it was in statistics, where such things are usually tolerated, I felt it was worth putting it right. It was in a scenario such as this: The times an athlete takes to run …
Dear Uncle Colin, I’m told that $\frac{16^p \times 8^q}{4^{p+q}}=2^n$, and I need to find $n$ in terms of $p$ and $q$. How would I do that? $q$ Uppishly In $n$ Equation Hi, $q$UI$n$E1, and thanks for your message! There are several ways to approach this, as per always. Let’s start with a couple of …
A puzzle from @Barney_MT: Find angle BDC This turns out to be a bit more demanding than I expected. There are spoilers below the line, showing a solution that took rather more time and space than the final polished version does. Spoilers below the line! Adding in circles When I’ve got isosceles …
Dear Uncle Colin, I have to find the values of $x$, between 0 and $\pi$ inclusive, where $2\cos(x) > \sec(x)$. My answer was $0 \le x \lt \piby 4$, but the answer also includes $\piby 2 \lt x \lt \frac{3}{4}\pi$. I don’t understand why! Stuck Evaluating Confusing And Nasty Trig Hi, SECANT, and …
A puzzle that came to me via @realityminus3, who credits it to @manuelcj89: $\sin(A) + \sin(B) + \sin(C) = 0$ $\cos(A) + \cos(B) + \cos(C) = 0$ Find $\cos(A-B)$. There’s something pretty about that puzzle. Interestingly, my approach differed substantially from all of my Trusted And Respected …
It’s time for the @BigMathsJam Wrong, But Useful! @stecks (Katie Steckles): Brouwer’s Fixed Point Theorem: “they said it’s a theorem, so I’ve got to believe it.” Mentions @jamesgrime. @christianp (Christian Lawson-Perfect): ordering cards to generate a fractal sequence. @peterrowlett (Peter …
Dear Uncle Colin, I have to prove that, if $a > b \ge 2$, then $ab > a + b$. I can see it must be true, but I can’t prove it! Any ideas? Questioning Everything Done Hi, QED, and thanks for your message! There are several ways to go about this, as usual. I’m going to talk through two: a …
One of the reasons I’m writing the Dictionary of Mathematical Eponymy is to introduce myself to new ideas, and to mathematicians I didn’t know about. To things I wish I knew more about. Elliptic curves are pretty high on that list. What is the Lutz-Nagell theorem? It’s sometimes - reasonably, since …
Dear Uncle Colin, I have to find the greatest common divisor of $x^4 - 5x^3 + 8x^2 - 10x + 12$ and $x^4 + x^2 - 2$. How do I go about that? - Extremely Unhappy, Clueless Learner In Distress Hi, EUCLID, and thanks for your message! Before we try to find the GCD of these two polynomials, it would make …
In a currently-recent (but by the time you read this, long in the past) Chalkdust1, @cshearer42 gave a puzzle that caught my eye. One of the things I love about Catriona’s puzzles is that you usually get two-for-the-price-of-one: there’s “getting the right answer”, which is not usually hard, and …
Dear Uncle Colin, I’m told that $f(x) = \frac{5x-7}{(x-1)(x-2)}, x\ne 1, x\ne 2$, and need to express it in partial fractions. My usual method would be to write it as $\frac{A}{x-1} + \frac{B}{x-2}$, multiply by $(x-1)(x-2)$ and substitute $x=1$ and $x=2$ to find $A$ and $B$ - but the definition …
On Twitter, @RuedigerSimpson pointed me at an episode of My Favourite Theorem in which @FawnPNguyen mentioned a method for constructing $\sqrt{7}$: draw a circle of radius 4 construct a perpendicular to the radius at a distance of 3 from the centre the distance between the base of the perpendicular …
Dear Uncle Colin, I need to work out the limit of $\frac{2^{3x} - 1}{3^{2x}-1}$ as $x \to 0$, and I don’t have any ideas at all. Do you? - Fractions Rotten, Exponents Generally Excellent Hi, FREGE, and thanks for your message! There are a couple of ways to approach this: you should choose between …
This one came from user_1312 on reddit with a heading “This is a bit tricky… Enjoy!”. What else can we do but solve it? Let $m$ and $n$ be positive numbers such that $\frac{m}{n} = 1 + \frac{1}{2} + \frac{1}{3} + \dots + \frac{1}{101}$. Prove that $m-n$ is a multiple of 103. My first approach was to …
In this month’s episode of Wrong, But Useful, we talk to @AJMagicMessage, who is Andrew Jeffrey in real life, and one of the driving forces behind Maths Week England, which in 2019 is November 11th to 15th. Apologies for a few issues with feedback in this episode. Dave takes full …
Dear Uncle Colin, I’m trying to figure out how many possible draws there are for the Champions’ League quarter-finals. There are eight teams involved, and let’s assume first leg home advantage doesn’t matter (so A vs B is the same as B vs A) and there’s no restriction on which teams can be matched. …
When I was about eight, my parents bought, as a Christmas gift for my brother and me, a “Jungle Gym”, plastic tubes and connectors that fit together to make whatever the imagination came up with, a sort of large-scale Meccano. My brother went out into the garden to build castles and trains; I stayed …
Dear Uncle Colin, I’m told that 70% of the aircraft that go missing in a certain country are subsequently rediscovered. Of those that are recovered, 60% have an emergency locator, and 90% of those that aren’t recovered, don’t have a locator. Supposing an aircraft has disappeared, what’s the …
Some days your mind wanders into an interesting puzzle: not necessarily because it’s a difficult puzzle, but because it has familiar result. Then the puzzle becomes, how are the two things linked? For example, I had cause to add up all of the numbers in the times tables - let’s say the grid from …
In this month’s podcast, we’re joined by @CoreMathsCat, who is Catherine van Sarloos in real life. We discuss: Number of the Podcast: 179 (balloons) Maths Week England is mid-November (11-16th). Catherine is involved in running a contest for it! Via Peter Rowlett: Women’s names Via Adam …
Dear Uncle Colin, I’m given that a curve has equation $y = ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + 1$. It has a turning point at $\left( -1, \frac{11}{3} \right)$ and an inflexion point when $x=2$. How do I find the missing constants? - I’m Not Feeling Like Evaluating Constants, Thanks Hi, INFLECT, and thanks for your …
“Do the hotplates heat the food through properly?” “Oh yes, they come out of the oven at 200 degrees and the temperature drops by a degree every minute.” To @dragondodo’s credit, she did not launch into a lecture on Newton cooling. But she did grumble about it to me - and it got me wondering. All …
Dear Uncle Colin, In reading Sir Dermot Turing’s XY&Z, he states that the number of species of cycle is 101 - and after a bit of thought, I figured out that that’s the number of partitions of the number 13. However, I couldn’t work out how to get 101! Can you help? Erroneous Numbers - I Get …
“Sensei, why have you covered the entire Earth in an area-preserving wrap?” “It’s all @colinthemathmo’s doing.” “I’m surprised you’re doing it in hardware rather than working it out in your head.” “Oh, $\frac{1000}{\sqrt{\pi}}$? That’s trivial.” “But of course it is.” “I mean, $\frac{1}{\pi}$ …
Dear Uncle Colin, I have a probability question that involves a weird place where every family has three children, and every child is either a girl or a boy. 50-50. Independent of each other. If I take a random family, and choose at random one of the children, I have to find the probability that …
I am a big fan of polyhedra. I’ve raved elsewhere about the icosidodecahedron, and even something as dull as a cube is something I can get behind. And so, naturally, I wondered: is there a periodic table of polyhedra? And the answer is “not exactly”. But there’s something pretty close to it, the …
Dear Uncle Colin, I can derive the timeless SUVAT equation $v^2 = u^2 + 2as$, but I can’t intuitively see where it comes from. Any clues? - Everyone Needs Explanations, Really Get Yours Hi, ENERGY, and thanks for your message! This is one that I never really picked up on for a long time - but when I …