The Aperiodical

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a set of Tantrix tiles, a beaded necklace and some juggling balls. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Alex Corner.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a stick of chalk. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a t-shirt featuring Pythagoras’ theorem. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. Update: Here’s a lovely knitted Towers of Hanoi, tweeted in response to this episode by Pat Ashforth. @mathsobjects @aperiodical I have a knitted one (and a larger crochet one with ten rings) https://t.co/NCah3d24LQ pic.twitter.com/l6L0Jpi6G8— Pat Ashforth (1948 – 2021) (@matheknitician) April 1, 2019

Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, episodes of Mathematical Objects will take an object, real or abstract, as inspiration to chat about a mathematical topic. This introduction explains the idea ahead of the first episode, coming soon.

As part of our special Apéry takeover today, I chatted to mathematicians Ben Sparks and James Grime, to find out what we know about the mathematics Apéry did – it’s an enjoyable 10-minute listen.

Cushing was injured in a serious maths accident recently (he fell out of the bath) so I wanted to assess the damage to his number-wrangling faculties. Fortunately, there’s the National Numeracy Challenge, which begins with a test to pinpoint your weak areas. National Numeracy is a charity that wants every adult in the UK to “reach a level of numeracy skills that allow them to meet their full potential.” Well, if there’s one thing we’ve got, it’s bags of potential. So I called David up and we took the test together. Because I had my fears about how it might go, I recorded our conversation. You can listen to that below. You’ll probably get the most out of it if you follow along with the test yourself, by going to nnchallenge.org.uk and signing up. It only takes a minute! WARNING: Spoilers ahead         We got to Level 2! And it turns out it did give us certificates! More information Take the National Numeracy Challenge (or, since you’re reading this site, share that link with your relatives) National Numeracy

MathsJam is an annual conference in the UK, and a monthly night in pubs around the world, organised respectively by mathematician and juggler Colin Wright, and stand-up mathematician Matt Parker. We cornered Matt and Colin at the MathsJam conference last November, and talked to them for just over half an hour about the conference, the pub nights, and a disturbing amount about cake. Here are some links to the things we talked about: MathsJam website MathsJam conference website @MathsJam, on Twitter MathsJam Bake-off entries, 2013 Matt’s maths mug

David and I sat down again and talked about maths a bit more. I’m calling this number 1 because it suits both our counting systems: David can call this the first podcast of a new series, and I can say the one we put out under All Squared was number 0. Everyone wins! Here follows a long rambly list of things we talked about, and some things we alluded to too. The button to actually play the podcast is down at the bottom of the post. Algebraic combinatorial geometry: the polynomial method in arithmetic combinatorics, incidence combinatorics, and number theory The probabilistic method Swiss cheeses, rational approximations and universal plane curves (The one with the excellent bibliography) A cheaper Swiss cheese Alice in Switzerland: The life and mathematics of Alice Roth Meromorphic function Carrots for dessert Orange peels and Fresnel integrals Cake Cutting Mechanisms The University of Auckland has lots of kiwis in its logo. Newcastle University only has one lion. Computer analysis of Sprouts with nimbers Nimbers On Numbers and Games How to eat 4/9 of a pizza On the Cookie Monster Problem 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know Garfield’s proof of the Pythagorean theorem Napoleon’s theorem Arithmetic derivative David really does have a big tattoo of $\pi$ on his chest. Tukey tallying There exist infinitely many twin primes iff there are infinitely many primes $p$ such that $(p^2)^{\prime\prime\prime} = 1$. The Princeton Companion to Mathematics (warning: auto-playing “podcast”) A CBE is not quite as worthy as a Knight or a Dame The book with the pictures of nudey ladies is Groupes Stables, by Bruno Poizat. The French edition with the pictures is very hard to get hold of (we had to do an inter-library loan through the university), but the foreword to the English translation is superb, and basically boils down to “je ne regrette rien”. The proof that $\sqrt[n+2]{2}$ is irrational because of Fermat’s Last Theorem, which was retold at MathsJam by Julia Collins. That came from the MathOverflow question, “Awfully sophisticated proof for simple facts”. Congruent number Matrix determinant fact Determinants and Matrices by A.C. Aitken (possibly shonky PDF copy) Pfaffian The 15 stupid proofs that the primes are infinite were published in the latest issue of Paradox (PDF), the magazine of the Melbourne University maths and stats society. They’re on page 17.

We haven’t done one of these for absolutely ages. Since all three of us were at the big MathsJam conference a couple of weekends ago, we decided to introduce a local minimum into the fun curve by sitting down and talking about how this site’s doing. Actually, we ended up talking about the MathsJam baking competition for absolutely ages. When we got round to talking about the site, we mentioned: Council orders maths & Sudoku to be removed from mathematician’s gravestone Prime gaps update All Squared, number 10: maths journalism From the mailbag: dual inversal numbers Carnival of Mathematics 104 Submit a thing to the next Carnival of Mathematics