But as it’s all in a good cause – raising money for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY) – I suggest you watch, enjoy, and check out the charity’s good work.

The video was made at Surrey’s Amesbury School, with the help of students, teachers, and parents.
Good show!

The new government has pledged to reduce the UK’s deficit by £6bn in the short term, with further savings to follow. This amount is relatively trivial in relation to the size of the deficit, but seen by some as an important first step.

1.3% of that six billion will – according to today’s news – be Becta-shaped (page 3 in the PDF linked above). The Department for Children, Schools, and Families has already changed to the more Ronseal Department for Education.

We’re still figuring out exactly what the demise of Becta means for us at Whizz, but with the organisation’s (or ‘quango’s’) remit to increase awareness and uptake of educational technology in state schools, there may be some negative effects.

Despite this, its our users and our staff who do the most work to spread the word about Maths-Whizz, and so the appearance or disappearance of government-funded bodies we hope will not affect our fortunes too greatly…

It is a truth not acknowledged universally enough* that Maths Is Good For You. By this I mean basic numeracy will give you skills for life and work, and develop mental rigour that will benefit you in ways you might never have appreciated.

Good outfit. Bad maths.

The God of Whizz is a cheerleader for maths, not least because of his role in making the fantastic online maths tutor called Maths-Whizz, but he’s inclined to be positive about maths and science skills in general, because he’s that kinda guy.

Something called ‘Hon-Sho‘ caught the God of Whizz’s attention last year, and to his dismay it’s still on the Interwebs in 2010. I’ll let their website explain:

Hon-Sho means “Your true character”. Rooted in mysticism and philosophy, Chinese oracle reading can be traced back over 4,000 years. Hon-Sho uses your personal and unique Digital-DNA to produce a character profile and daily oracle readings which enable you to make decisions regarding your fate.

Clear? Me neither. But it turns out that your ‘digital DNA’ is simply a set of numbers obtained from your date of birth, and the values of the letters in your name, where a=1 and z=26. So Samantha Smith, born on 17th September 1969, has values of 60, 77 and 69.

These magic numbers are used to create a personal ‘hexagram’ (a stack of six broken or unbroken lines), and a daily hexagram based on coincidences between your personal numbers and 64 daily random numbers. These hexagrams each link to particular nuggets of advice or information that can apparently be used to help you make decisions about your life.

Why ‘digital DNA’? Stay with me here – the hexagrams are divided into two ‘trigrams’ (three rows of broken or unbroken bars) which relate to binary counting methods. There are eight possible trigrams, and with two trigrams in a hexagram, 8 x 8 = 64.

It so happens that the genetic code of four nucleic acids (A,G,C,T) combine in threes to code for amino acids in 64 ways (4^3 = 64)! OMG.

Deep Breath.

The God of Whizz has, in theory, no objection to fools being parted from their money – it’s being going on since the beginning of time. The best schemes are those that seem just plausible enough, whilst promising incredible benefits that make the outlay worthwhile.

You say to yourself “I’m not sure if this is true, but if it is, it’s money well-spent!” It’s the precautionary principle, where the cost of not knowing your future outweighs the risk that you are throwing your money down the drain.

But the problem is that such things patently AREN’T true, and that a moment’s thought tells us that you would be better off throwing your money down the drain, after all – a sewer worker might score an unexpected bonus.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that, according to Hon-Sho, your life is entirely bound in your date of birth and your given name. But what happens if you change your name? What’s the difference between the life chances of Jon and Jonathan, Alice and Alys? What if your mother had been induced a day early, or if her labour had lasted an extra day? Would your chances have forever changed when the clock in the maternity ward ticked past midnight? If the answer to any of the above is ‘yes’, then how?

All these scenarios would have yielded different ‘Digital DNA’, but would they have made for a fundamentally different person?

We are reassured that our actual genetic profiles are millions of base pairs long, that interpretation of our DNA still challenges some of the finest minds in science, and that it takes some serious kit to even read the stuff of life. So why might we willingly allow our lives to be boiled down to three short numbers?

Hon-Sho relies on our general lack of confidence with maths and our tendency to put value in ‘historic’ systems. The 64 coincidence seems magical enough to suggest that somehow the ancient Chinese anticipated modern science, just as the equally nonsensical Bible Code shows the Good Book anticipated the Second World War because some of its letters spelled ‘Hitler’.

But an old idea isn’t necessarily a good one, and a mathematical description isn’t necessarily a meaningful one. Ancient maths sounds doubly reliable (see fashions for vedic maths, mayan maths, etc).

But whilst many historic methods are still useful, Hon-Sho seems to involve throwing numbers at a wall and putting great, mystical, stock in the ones that stick. Daily Hon-Sho reports rely on the Barnum (or Forer) Effect, where vague descriptions and predictions are sufficiently specific to make the reader believe they apply to him or her directly.

Hon-Sho is the new horoscope. Which is all very well, it gives local newspapers a little extra revenue, and probably provides reassuring bromides to thousands of subscribers. Horoscope writers have been fleecing the gullible and wishful thinkers for decades. But the God of Whizz gets hot under the collar over this new abuse of science, maths, and rationality.

Numbers don’t mean anything. Maths has no intrinsic value, other than as a wonderful, challenging, and sometimes beautiful way of describing the world. It is the science of patterns, but nothing in those patterns holds any meaning, except where they relate to other things. The sooner we can all realise this, the sooner we can put our money towards things that will truly make us healthy, happy, and wise.

But if you still want help making decisions about the big things – toss a coin.

* With apologies to Austen, J.

5...4...3...2...1.. Lift off!

Check out a gallery of this geektastic device (click the picture above), or watch one of the design team explain how the Lego Space Shuttle is put together, below.

[via Gizmodo]

Rather than serve only to be hooked, sliced, or shanked into the near distance, chased by a volley of insults, hundreds of red and blue golf balls have been put towards a magnificent three-dimensional Sierpinski Triangle (or tetrahedron, in this instance).

A use for golf balls - maths fractal pyramid

To those otherwise unversed in Sierpinski’s Triangle (also known as a ‘gasket’), it’s a beautifully elegant fractal.

See how successively small triangular ’subtractions’ from the main triangle produce a lovely, almost threadlike, fractal pattern. The rules for creating this are simple, and can be repeated ad infinitum.

Sierpinski Triangle (Wikimedia)

(Wikipedia)

You don’t even have to start with a triangle to end up with a triangular-shaped Sierpinski fractal. Try it!

Or, better, try the ‘Chaos Game‘, an exotic-sounding name for something you can play with just pencil, paper, ruler, and die:

(Wikipedia)

[Via Make Blog]

The flight ban is being lifted after the Iceland Volcano

This is good news for everyone, except possibly wealthy holidaymakers unconcerned about returning to work. The volcano’s timing could not have been worse for families keen to get back in time for the summer term, let alone for teachers kept from their classes.

There are many lessons to be learned from this sometimes surreal interruption to modern jet-age lifestyles, and we wouldn’t presume to know them all.

But we do know that thousands of parents may have been spared concern over the brief gap in their children’s education with a dose of Maths-Whizz maths tutoring.

Maths-Whizz can be used in airport lounges, in overspill hotel rooms, on internet-connected channel ferries and – who knows – even on navy mercy ships, come to pluck travellers from foreign shores.

Maths-Whizz – perfect for volcanic disruptions.

If the God of Whizz was of an uncharitable turn of mind he might suggest that the world of finance has recently honoured mathematical accuracy more in the breach than in the observance.

In this vein, the Financial Times’ Gillian Tett suggests that mathematicians must get out of their ivory towers to restore credibility to the idea of ‘financial mathematics’, whose reputation the Credit Crunch and international financial crises have done so much to sully.

As Gillian Tett suggests:

What really damaged the financial system in recent years was not so much “maths” or “economics”; instead the crucial problem was bad maths (and economics) that was used and abused. Now, more than ever, mathematicians need to get out of their ivory towers or back offices and state that loudly, not just for their sake, but for economists. And, of course, those bankers.

The God of Whizz agrees, and humbly suggests a course of primary maths tutoring for the wizards who did all that financial abusing.

The maths pig

The God of Whizz, in his ineffable wisdom, was prompted to comment on the post, worth reading as much for the discussion it has generated from readers as for the nature of those 10 ‘dumb’ questions.

Whilst I didn’t agree that all ten examples were awful, I agree that test setters and teachers can do more to make the maths relevant, and stimulating, and that to do so isn’t pandering to a child’s limited attention span.

Mathspigger Kerry Cue seems a genuine evangelist for fun maths, for bringing the science of patterns into the real world, with problems like the downforce required to drive a car upside-down, or the number of balloons required to hoist a house (after Wired).

Tim Muffett of BBC Breakfast interviewed students and teachers at north London’s Anson Primary School, which has a novel solution to the problem – teach the parents!

Teachers at Anson School have produced short video snippets outlining key principles that parents can watch with their offspring and so become a constructive part of the homework process.

The idea that Anson Primary School is teaching the wrong people is wide of the mark. As we know well at Maths-Whizz – the most engaged and motivated students have engaged and motivated parents.

A child whose mother enjoys a subject, or is confidently able to assist him with homework, will be more inclined to see value in the subject, to do well at school, and to ask for constructive help.

This is something we’ve been fostering with Maths-Whizz for some time.

The circle of learning with Maths-Whizz

Our home and schools maths tutoring services promote communication between parents, teachers, and students – parents experience our animated tutor with their children, teachers discuss student reports with parents, and kids tend to talk to one another about toys, pets, and our Challenge feature.

[BBC News]