Mathematical headaches? Problem solved!
Hi, I'm Colin, and I'm here to help you make sense of maths
Mathematical headaches? Problem solved!
Hi, I'm Colin, and I'm here to help you make sense of maths
“Yarr,” said the Mathematical Pirate. “Ye’ll have plundered a decent calculator, of course?” “Er… well, I bought it from Argos, but… aye, cap’n! A Casio fx-83 GT PLUS!” “A fine calculator,” said the Mathematical Pirate. “One that offers you at least three ways to factorise cubics.” “Really!? I thought you
Read More →In a class recently, I came across a circle theorem problem I’m certain I’ve seen before, but that I didn’t know off the top of my head how to solve. Here it is; have a go at it if you’d like to.  The examiners’ expectation was clearly that the
Read More →“$\cos^{-1}(0.93333)$, said the student. A GCSE student, struggling a little; the Mathematical Ninja bit his tongue rather than correct him to $\arccos$ or to $\frac {14}{15}$; he also accepted, grudgingly, the answer was going to be in degrees. “Maybe 21 bad degrees?” “21.04”, said the student. “Not too terrible.” “I
Read More →“[James McEvoy] is an unashamed geek - he was reading a book on physics, as you do, to see if it could improve his performance.” - Radio 5 swimming commentator “You need some kind of accountancy degree to work out what each of them needs to do in the final
Read More →Didn't July seem to go on for ever? What's that? Oh. Um, yeah, delayed Episode 17 because @reflectivemaths (Dave Gale) decided a family holiday was more important than your listening pleasure. What a selfish man. This month, we talk about: Dave's failure to send a postcard The contents of fruit-juice
Read More →The Mathematical Ninja woke up at 8:58, and opened his other eye. “$e^{12}$?” asked his alarm clock. “$160,000$,” said the Mathematical Ninja, and sat bolt upright. He leapt out of his sleeping corner, somersaulted across the room, landing in front of the whiteboard just as the student arrived. “$e^{12}$?” he
Read More →This is something that struck me the other day when someone asked me about the difference between university maths and sixth-form maths: every time a student moves between educational levels, “what maths is” undergoes a dramatic change. This is based on my memories of school and is likely to be
Read More →A student asked: What's the link between the Poisson formula and the binomial? ... and I started to cry a little bit. Infinitely many trials You use the Poisson distribution when you have events happening at a constant rate, on a continuous time-frame - as opposed to the binomial, which
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