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.
This post is inspired by a question asked by Dan - thank you, Dan! So here’s the gist of Dan’s question: Take a random sum, e.g. 496866 + 446221 = 943087. Add up all the digits in each number (39, 19 and 31). Keep adding up the digits in each number until you’re done: 12, 10 and 4; …
This is the one area where I’m better with degrees than with radians - and I suspect that’s only because I don’t particularly notice when radian angles are close to $\frac{\pi}{4}$, but I do when degree angles are close to 45º. This one’s a trickier one than we’ve been …
June already? That sounds like it’s almost summer. However, bad luck, you still have a few weeks of exams to go. How are they coming along? Well, what can I help you with this week? Just drop me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to answer it.
“The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.” - A.N. Whitehead
One of my students scoffed at me the other day for saying I liked football. In particular, I like bad football - the last game I went to see was Maidenhead United against Truro City in the second qualifying round of the FA Cup, and even that was a bit more skillful than I’d have really liked. …
Radians - as I’ve ranted before - are the most natural way to express angles and do trigonometry. No ifs, no buts, degrees are an inherently inferior measure and the sooner they’re abolished, the better. (In other news, the campaign to replace the mishmash of units called …
Welcome to exam season. What’s on your mind? Well, what can I help you with this week? Just drop me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to answer it.
Happy Bobmas, everybody!
“That’s the nice thing about maths,” said someone who shall remain nameless. “There’s always one right answer!” I coughed. I may have said ‘bullshit’ under my breath, a little bit. It’s my second-least-favourite thing to hear anyone say1 . The …
My favourite trick, when I was helping students at the Physics Homework Centre at Montana State University, was to eyeball a question for a moment and say “… which is, what, 53.13 degrees or so…” without batting an eyelid. The poor students! There they were trying to figure …
Must be getting close to C1 and C2 now, huh? Well, what can I help you with this week? Just drop me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to answer it.
I’m not talking here about the stress exams put students under, although I could. I’m talking here about how exams are one of the worst possible ways of testing whether someone is a good mathematician. Here’s the problem: maths exams are tests of a) memory and b) calculation. You …
I’ll hold up my hands here and say: most of the secrets of the mathematical ninja are guides to showing off. Few of them have much practical use beyond making everyone else in the class look at you funny. This one - converting degrees into radians - is different. If you’ve read my …
Here we all are again, the weekend looming large, the sun threatening to come out, and… a pile of work to do. Well, what can I help you with this week? Just drop me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to answer it.
You don’t see many run-down, out-of-business casinos, which should serve as a tip-off: almost nobody beats the house in the long run. In this article, I’ll show you - using the binomial distribution and the normal distribution - why that is. Sure, you might get a few people who come out …
You might think ‘when would I ever write to an abstract concept like logarithms’, but you’d be surprised. I had occasion to write this letter a few weeks ago: Dear Base 10 Logarithms, I’m very sorry that I bullied you. I recall saying things like ‘grown-ups always use …
I believe it’s traditional to do a joke about May The Fourth be with you, but it was old when I first heard it, about 15 years ago. So I’ll kind of resist, but only in a way that still makes it clear I’d love to do the bad joke. Well, what can I help you with this week? Just drop …
If you want to frighten an A-level maths student, you don’t need to produce a high-budget horror movie; you just need to produce a fraction. Or a fractionstein, as I like to call it. I want to try to cure you of your irrational phobia of fractions. I agree, they’re ugly and more involved …
[chimp chimp = ‘3’] Countdown puzzle: Make 952 from 100, 75, 50, 25, 6 and 3 Have a go at this one before you read on. It’s pretty straightforward to make 953 (exactly as the poor antagonist, Gerald, in this story does): 100 × (6 + 3) = 900 900 + 50 = 950 75 ÷ 25 = 3 950 + 3 = 953. …
[chimp chimp = ‘4’] Countdown puzzle: Make 952 from 100, 75, 50, 25, 6 and 3 Have a go at this one before you read on. It’s pretty straightforward to make 953 (exactly as the poor antagonist, Gerald, in this story does): 100 × (6 + 3) = 900 900 + 50 = 950 75 ÷ 25 = 3 950 + 3 = 953. …
Countdown puzzle: Make 952 from 100, 75, 50, 25, 6 and 3 Have a go at this one before you read on. It’s pretty straightforward to make 953 (exactly as the poor antagonist, Gerald, in this story does): 100 × (6 + 3) = 900 900 + 50 = 950 75 ÷ 25 = 3 950 + 3 = 953. Well done, seven points, …
It’s the last Friday in April. That means it must be exam season just around the corner. How’s your revision going? What can I help you with this week? Just drop me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to answer it.
Million-to-one shots come up nine times out of ten. - Terry Pratchett While researching rules for ninjas to live by (don’t ask), I came across a mathematical phenomenon I’d never noticed noticing. It’s this: The Law of Inverse Ninjas: The probability of a group of ninjas winning a …
Your average ninja (if there is such a thing) doesn’t need to do the swirly-sword manoeuvre. If they wanted, they could just run you through and you’d be dead before you even noticed they were there. But that’s rather rude and unsophisticated, the kind of thing a pirate might do. …
Thank Gauss it’s Friday! Well, what can I help you with this week? Just drop me a comment below and I’ll do what I can to answer it.