…A bold claim from The Daily Telegraph.
So have a look and (in a Geordie voice) you decide.
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!
For those of our UK Whizzers living under a rock, we have a new coalition government.
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…
Reluctant golfer that he is, the God of Whizz has finally stumbled across the best use for all those silly little balls – maths. Fractals, in fact.
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.
Financial mathematics.
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.
