March 15th, 2010
Our Google overlords yesterday recognised a day of significance to every fan of that most famous of irrational numbers – pi.
Google Celebrates Pi Day
Pi (as any fule kno) describes the relationship between a circle’s radius and its circumference or area, or between a sphere’s radius and its surface area or volume.
If you’re wondering why yesterday could be described as Pi Day, remember that in America Sunday 14th March is written 3/14/2010. The first three digits of the date match those of the magic pi – 3.14159…
Maths-Whizzers can find out how to derive pi for themselves in one of our Year 7 exercises. Check it out here.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our online maths tutor, then head on over to our homepage.
[via Mashable]
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September 10th, 2009
Today is the 10th of September 2009. 10/09/09 (or 09/10/09 if you’re American). Today is a very special day. But that doesn’t mean that other days might not be special, too…
Here’s a 9-point mathematical, scientific, and cultural guide to make any day special:
Find an historic event that occurred on the date, and commemorate it
Make the day a special day for marketing purposes, such as International Satsuma Day, or National Mail Marketeers Day
Identify a religious figure or saint associated with the day
Scour historical texts for catastrophic predictions associated with the date
If no such predictions exist, run a series of programs that will turn words and letters from your chosen historic text into a sequence of numbers, ideally ones that match your date.
Look for spiritual or cultural significance of any of the numbers in your date. Good numbers to start with are 9, 7, 8, or 3, any multiples thereof. If any number has a definition in that culture’s language that sounds like ‘death’, ‘life’, or ‘wealth’, even better. If you can’t find any significant cultural, linguistic or historical links, invent one.
If the above isn’t possible, devise a cunning mathematical algorithm which turns the otherwise dull sequence of numbers in the date into a genuinely interesting one
Are the numbers in the date symmetrical, or palindromic? If they aren’t, try re-ordering the format of the date. For instance, 30th November 2003 is not palindromic in America (11/30/03) but it is palindromic in the UK (30/11/03)!
Is it the day before (or the day after) a special day?
And whilst you’re celebrating the importance of this, or any other, day, sign up to Maths-Whizz, our powerful online maths tutor. With Maths-Whizz, you can cultivate a brain well-prepared for future life and education, and maybe you’ll even be able to predict the next truly special day!
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May 14th, 2009
Humans were not born to do maths. Those, like me, who don’t dream in numbers, think this is stating the obvious, but it’s worth remembering, even so.
The human brain that lets us add, subtract, read, write, walk and chew gum (sometimes at the same time!) evolved from a brain that had different demands imposed upon it, most of which revolved around staying alive long enough to have offspring. So how have we co-opted brain regions specialised for navigating ancient woodland and savannah into helping us file our tax returns?
Read the rest of this entry »
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May 11th, 2009
We’re no strangers to the perils of publishing. Maths-Whizz stands on the quality and accuracy of its maths exercises. When errors crop up (and, with over 2400 animated and exam-style exercises, they do) we do our best to correct them, and improve our service and software in the process.
This is all par for the course in publishing. No learning materials can be guaranteed perfect, but you’d expect a basic children’s counting book to be pretty much error-free, which is what makes the following quite so baffling and hilarious. [Thanks to FailBlog (Failblog not suitable for children).]
The authors clearly would have benefited from some basic Foundation (Kindergarten)-level online maths tutoring.
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