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

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!

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:

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.

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:

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 involved in making advances accessible to a wider audience, and the differences between blogging and print journalism.

Here are some links to go with the things we talked about: