By Christian Perfect, Peter Rowlett and Katie Steckles
Occasional(ly) mathematical blogging
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a noughts and crosses board. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a thermometer. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Noughts and Crosses board, covering Noughts and Crosses (Tic Tac Toe), a surprising number of variants, with a bit of higher dimensions and topology for good measure. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter...
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a tangerine (no, really!). Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. Check out the blog post for a nice image of the curve discussed!
A conversation about mathematics inspired by a pile of matchsticks. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.
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.
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...
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...
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...
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...
Evelyn Lamb is a professional mathematician who has taken up journalism on the side. She received the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship last year, and spent the summer writing for the magazine Scientific American. We talked to her about maths journalism, the challenges...
We have an unusual All Squared podcast for you this time. My good friend David Cushing has been asking to do a podcast for absolutely ages. We couldn’t decide on a single topic to talk about, so instead I suggested we...
This is the second and final part of our interview with Colm Mulcahy. Last week we talked about card magic; in this part we moved on to the subject of Martin Gardner and the gatherings of interesting people associated with...
Colm Mulcahy is an original Aperiodical contributor (Aperiodicontributor?) and friend of the site. He’s spent the last year and a bit writing his new book, Mathematical Card Magic: Fifty-Two New Effects. It came out a few weeks ago, so we thought...
This number of the All Squared podcast contains the final third of our interview with the inestimable David Singmaster, and then a bit from CP about his favourite book, “A treatise on practical arithmetic, with book-keeping by single entry“, by...
Good maths books are simultaneously plentiful and rare. While there are a few classics almost everyone knows about and has copies of (Gardner, Hardy, etc.), the trade in lesser-known maths books is considerably less well-organised. Very few bookshops have well-stocked...
It’s a repeat booking for the Festival of the Spoken Nerd in number 4 (or 16 if you belong to Team All Squared) of our podcast. Standup mathematician Matt Parker joined us to talk about interesting coincidences. Here are some links...
Remember, remember, The fourteenth of March. While the previous number of All Squared failed to achieve topicality by appearing several weeks after the event it was about, this time we’ve hit the nail bang on the head with a podcast all...
Here’s the second edition of our new podcast, All Squared. This time we talked to Dr Andrew Taylor, PhD, about nonsense formulas in the news. In particular, since we recorded very close to pancake day, we took a close look at...
We’ve been quietly making plans and gathering material for a new project over the past couple of weeks, after noticing that there’s an unusual paucity of maths podcasts at the moment. Well, that exciting new project is now happening, and...
Two days late, because that is the way we rotate here, it’s another episode of our sporadic navel-gazing podcast. In this episode we talked about: Our piece on the Invariant Subspace Problem (and the more recent news) Log-log! Who’s there? Not a...
After two months we’ve finally done another podcast! We completely forgot even the most rudimentary things about how to do a podcast. Sorry. In this episode, we talked about: Mathematical Christmas cracker jokes Fractal Christmas trees Posts from MathsJam speakers...
We took the opportunity of us all being in the same small slice of space and time (MathsJam, last weekend) to record another episode of our continuing audio part-work, The Aperiodcast. We talked about: Christian’s Recreational Maths Seminar Dara O...
Here’s another episode of our irregular podcast about what’s been happening on the site. This time, we talked about: Advances in pure nonsense Robert Schneider, Mathematical Musician/Musical Mathematician #MTT2K: Teachers critique Khan Academy Surds: what are they good for? Calculus...
Leaves are falling, a chilly wind is blowing and I can hear the distant thunder of undergrads’ hooves as they stampede towards my department. Yes, Summer is giving way to Autumn, so it’s time for another Aperiodcast. If you had...
Here’s the fifth Aperiodcast, covering what’s happened on the site basically since the start of Summer. Peter is busy doing work, so it was just Katie and me blathering on about a variety of things. The posts discussed in this...
Here’s another Aperiodcast, covering things that happened on the site between the 4th and the 20th of June. Posts discussed in this episode Ask a mathematician: “Where should we live?” by Alistair Bird The mathematics examinations faced by school leavers...
After an unexpectedly long wait of over three weeks, here’s the third Aperiodcast, discussing what’s happened on the site between 13/5/2012 and 3/6/2012. You’ll notice that we recorded this podcast four days ago – we were all having too much...
In true Aperiodical fashion, we left 13 days before recording another Aperiodcast, so here’s what we think about the last almost-two-weeks on the site. We talked about: “Futurama theorem” slightly improved The number line is not an intuitive concept Grow...
Here’s the very first edition of what we’ve cleverly decided to call The Aperiodcast. The plan is to record a short podcast every week or week-and-a-bit (this is the Aperiodical after all) talking about what’s been happening on the site,...