# April, 2013

## Silly Questions Amnesty

Beep! Sorry, Colin's not in right now. If you have a question he can answer when he gets back, please leave it after the beep. Beep!

## A litany of errors, or James Bloody Grime’s Blasted Logarithms Revisited

Problems worthy of attack/ Prove their worth by fighting back - Anon, often quoted by Erdos. A few weeks ago, James bloody Grime posted a question on logarithms that I had a creditable stab at answering. My first answer, it turned out, was wrong. I corrected it, and wrote up

## The Mathematical Ninja’s Rules of Fractions

The student, wisely, stammered an apology and the Mathematical Ninja pulled him back in through the window by the ankle. "But I just…" "Shht." "I mean…" "Shht." The Mathematical Ninja took a step towards the student and the student, finally shhted1. "Never," said the Mathematical Ninja, "let me catch you

## Basic Maths Skills: The Falklands Islands, Percentages and Bounds

I have no particular view on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. Or rather, I get so muddled up between my distaste for colonialism and the right of self-determination that I don't know what to think. In any case, I was interested by the recent referendum results in which the

## BREAKING NEWS: Largest prime discovered

39,916,801 has just been discovered to be the largest prime number. $11$ is a positive integer such that $11! + 1$ is prime; let $n = 11!$. Now, $n+2$ is clearly a multiple of 2, $n+3$ is a multiple of 3 and so on up to $2n$. Applying a similar