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.
I never really learned how to revise for a maths exam at school. I’m sure people tried to teach me, but I generally wound up reading passively through my notes, maybe copying them out, and possibly writing big question marks on them in highlighter. It worked ok for me, at least until a …
I never really learned how to revise for a maths exam at school. I’m sure people tried to teach me, but I generally wound up reading passively through my notes, maybe copying them out, and possibly writing big question marks on them in highlighter. It worked ok for me, at least until a …
or, why we need to show exams the red card Oh, Jesus wept. A study shows that in even years - when there’s meaningful international football in the summer - boys’ exam performances drop. The authors suggest starting the exams earlier so as not to disadvantage football-watchers. …
I don’t think that the benefit to one party or another is a valid reason to pick a voting system - but one of the features of AV is that it tends to select the least objectionable candidate. Here’s a simplified example. Let’s imagine we have four candidates contesting a seat - …
There’s an excellent article by [twit handle = ‘johnallenpaulos’] talking about a really interesting probability ‘paradox’ to do with summer births. It’s not really a paradox (as with a lot of probability, it makes perfect sense once you think it through), but the …
(Photo courtesy of UN Development Program.) We’ve had a lot of noticeable earthquakes around the world in the last year or so - Haiti, Chile, New Zealand. Probably no more than usual, except that we notice them more - but that’s a topic for another day. Instead, we’re going to talk …
Here, let me get on this soapbox a moment Things that irritate me beyond end, number two in a series of, well, lots: grumbles about how “oh, it’s pointless teaching maths, you only ever use it to work out discounts in the supermarket and there are calculators on your phone these …
If you follow the great big geeks on twitter - [twit handle=“jamesgrime”] and [twit handle=“standupmaths”], I’m looking at you - you’ll have seen bits and pieces of discussion about prime birthdays. How to find your next prime birthday It’s your prime …
Two things: the somewhat random-looking picture above is from The Moon Is Blue, a 1953 film that’s the first known reference to the ‘dating rule’ discussed here. Secondly, I don’t make any judgement about the validity of the ‘dating rule’ - you might find it a …
Good God, will you get your fractions sorted out? You’re meant to have been on top of them since primary school, but you’ve been studiously avoiding them for the last half-decade, haven’t you? If you’d put half as much effort into learning four simple rules as you have into …
… or, three easy steps to talking with your kids about $\sec(x)$1 If there’s one question parents dread more than “Where do babies come from?”, it’s “Can you give me some help with maths homework?” There are many possible reasons for this. The most common …
[twit handle=‘standupmaths’] pointed me at a puzzle by [twit handle=‘sciencepunk’] at MathsJam: or at the Science Punk blog. The question is: how many triangles are there in a ‘Mystic Rose’ shape like this one (right) - with six interconnected points. I reckon …