Tweets from 2018

@JanvierUK Now you've said it, I realise I'm the same!

Is this normal? Is Zuul about to appear?

First day back at work, and I'm instantly reminded my office chair broke last year 😧

@Alby @peterrowlett @stecks points deducted for typesetting the formula clearly. A list of variable names with no context would be more authentic

I can comfortably say that child CP would *not* have been able to put up with the dark side boss battles #SuperMarioOdyssey #NintendoSwitch

@JanvierUK happy birthday! 🎂

@worrydream maybe that came from asking "what still uses COBOL?"

Pro move from this survey: data protection statement *after* you've submitted your response

Time for more griping about online journal interfaces. This time, Wiley.
Does it look to you like actually reading the article is among the least prominent things on this page? Greyed-out, looks almost deprecated to me, compared to "related content"

at least this time, there's a nice, *labelled* PDF link floating aside from the rest of the interconnectedness-of-all-things cruft

Imagine being as useless as Theresa May

Uhh, @My_Metro? I think @drummondcentral
might need the toilet.

@tombutton @icecolbeveridge ooh, not sure how I feel about that. It's in the uncanny valley of presidential autonyms

@margaretwerth @evelynjlamb reminded me of "Officially, home plate doesn't exist": gosper.org/homeplate.html

Sometimes MS Office is extra helpful

@helenarney We're going to do the same in a bit. Already given our remaining first-size nappies, and this baby won't stop smashing her growth targets!

AMBIGUOUS PHRASING OF ODDS KLAXON twitter.com/qikipedia/stat…

@d_spiegel is it alright if I send you an email with a question about communication of odds in the news, for a piece on @aperiodical?

Does anyone know if there's a dataset of UK national lottery jackpot amounts going back to when it started somewhere on the web? Surely someone was noting them down each week?

@timstirrup ta!

@peterrowlett ooh, lovely

Current status: just been told edf energy's communications department is an internal department and doesn't communicate with customers

@benorlin Happy birthday! One year minus two days after me 🎂

@benorlin Then pass on my heartiest congratulations

@Bluebirdlouise @ShonaDav That is such a good way of thinking about it!

The dog is deeply unimpressed with the baby's farts. I told her that's very much like the pot calling the kettle black, but my dog has trouble with idioms

Turing-complete mechanical linkages!!!
arxiv.org/abs/1801.03534
This will appeal to @standupmaths and @sangwinc

@JanvierUK Thanks!

@FOTSN @stecks When did she do that?! I don't have any direct evidence that she sleeps, and plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest she doesn't.

I'm visiting Dublin tomorrow and Wednesday. Will almost def fail again to make it to Broom Bridge, but what other maths things can I see near UCD?

NEWS: Conservative in favour of keeping things as he currently perceives they are twitter.com/estwebber/stat…

Challenge: date this fridge by inferring that its name apparently didn't provoke a trademark infringement case

@DavidKButlerUoA @rak_1507 here's one: ssf!ssf!ssf, where s is square root, f is floor, and ! is factorial, evaluated from left to right

@DavidKButlerUoA @rak_1507 here's the python script I wrote to play about with this: gist.github.com/christianp/2bd…

@icecolbeveridge @MrChaconMath @DavidKButlerUoA @rak_1507 I've crunched the numbers and can do 4 in 28 steps: ssf!sf!ssssf!sssssf!sssssssf
By the way, I'm also delivering a workshop so you're all slowpokes

@icecolbeveridge @MrChaconMath @DavidKButlerUoA @rak_1507 It looks like no new values < (100000!) after 64 steps, unless some gimongous factorial would eventually collapse

@DavidKButlerUoA @icecolbeveridge @MrChaconMath @rak_1507 here's my python notebook:
gist.github.com/christianp/f8b…
basically, keep track of shortest sequences to produce unique values, and try adding operations to the end

@DavidKButlerUoA @icecolbeveridge @MrChaconMath @rak_1507 Yep. And only show values less than 10^5

@DavidKButlerUoA @icecolbeveridge @MrChaconMath @rak_1507 I have a sequence of operations to apply, e.g. "sf!" is "square root then floor then factorial".
If a long sequence produces a result I've already made with a shorter sequence, obviously no point in looking at it any more.

@DavidKButlerUoA Fairly easily done, since you've got the list of steps for each number. Missing cycles of course

@rak_1507 @DavidKButlerUoA @MrChaconMath @icecolbeveridge Ah, you're allowing non-integer factorials, aka the gamma function. Lots shorter solutions if you do that

@MrChaconMath @icecolbeveridge @DavidKButlerUoA @rak_1507 About to get on a plane in literally 10 minutes. Will check tomorrow

@rak_1507 @MrChaconMath @icecolbeveridge @DavidKButlerUoA Home!

Fancy some lunchtime turbonerdery?
Play MatchTheNet, where you have to match 3d polytopes to their nets: matchthenet.de

@BTNMathsJam we discovered last night that the Italian cafe round the corner from my mum's stocks chinotto san pellegrino! The lady who ordered it was *not* impressed

@BTNMathsJam She said she thought it looked like diet coke 🤨

@fermatslibrary here's a sequence of 10, computed with @cocalc_com

Over on mathstodon.xyz, I see @dudeney_puzzles@mathstodon.xyz has reached another classic: mathstodon.xyz/@dudeney_puzzl…

Hah! Nice: someone categorising games based on their (sometimes incorrectly assessed) computational complexity.
I've collected some papers on that topic: read.somethingorotherwhatever.com/collection/com… twitter.com/ZenoRogue/stat…

@jamestanton Let one short side be a.
hypotenuse = ½(1 ± √5)a
Second short side is the geometric mean of the other two.
Can't have the hypotenuse be the geometric mean of the two short sides.

@JP_Mc_C @jamestanton yes, I should've checked...

😠🤯 twitter.com/CounterOfSheep…

what

Compound interest at 2% is about twice as quick to double your investment as compound interest at 1%.
5% is about 5 times as quick.

But not exactly! 10% is only about 9.5 times as quick.

Does this count as a rule of thumb?

I imagined some accountants must have already spotted it.
When was the last time computing logs was difficult, though? twitter.com/ptwiddle/statu…

Today's conventions and concepts question: does a 0×0 matrix exist? How about 0×m? If yes to both, are they different objects?

(Interpret 'does' and 'exist' as you wish)

Academia in 2018: trying to remember if a site is one of those skeezy content aggregators or a real journal publisher's necessarily-generic name for their online offering.
See: sciencedirect.com, researchgate.net, academia.edu

@darrenjw interestingly, this (ftp.cs.wisc.edu/Approx/empty.p…) claims Bourbaki only defined a single 'empty matrix'. I can see people fudging the distinction pre-computers

@darrenjw I can make a devil's advocate case for them all being the same thing if you only look at multiplication: the product of any matrix with the empty matrix is the empty matrix

@darrenjw Only so that the result is well-defined. But here it is: it's always the empty matrix

@MathsInspiratn @ChrisMaslanka I'll see you next Tuesday 😉

Emails from two colleagues in my inbox this morning. One called me Chris, the other Christine.
youtube.com/watch?v=v1c2Of…

@Steve_Perfect really? Do people misspell it?

Yeah, why not cross a magic square with the fifteen puzzle?
WHY NOT?!
mathstodon.xyz/@dudeney_puzzl…

Welp, there went my morning. Here's an interactive version of the puzzle: christianp.github.io/Dudeney403/
I got to play with CSS grids, so can I count it as professional development? twitter.com/christianp/sta…

on reflection, setting up a bot with the express intention of nerdsniping myself was a bad idea

@chalkdustmag can I be really pedantic and say that "a phenomena" makes my hackles raise?

@icecolbeveridge @chalkdustmag yes, that one

@icecolbeveridge @chalkdustmag as I was writing it, I was thinking "isn't it normally 'raise my hackles'"?

@benorlin oh man, that reminds me that @TweetsofCushing used to try to get to my blog with weird phrases constructed from unusual words I'd used in my posts, in the hope I'd see them in the logs. Things like "Nathan in the zero-knowledge hall of fame"

@ChrisHazell72 @ajk_44 @icecolbeveridge @chalkdustmag well, this went about as well as I expected

@efrataitel Hey, on Fridays I literally just sit in a chair and eat whatever's nearby. Not every day can be a winner!

@efrataitel Me!

Five years ago today was the most rock-n-roll my mathematical career has got so far: I was pretty pleased I'd made an origami icosahedron.

@ColinTheMathmo yes

@aPaulTaylor @ColinTheMathmo challenge: assuming the answer to Colin's question is "yes", find the siblings-in-law equivalence class that spans the most generations

My barber's has a new barber and a fish tank has replaced the old coffee table of out-of-date magazines. I've read too many Robert Rankin books to see this as anything other than an omen of Ragnarok

@BTNMathsJam @ColinTheMathmo @aPaulTaylor I hope so! My first thought was that the family tree(s) of Europe's royal families would be a good starting point

@Aoife_Hunt @robeastaway @ColinTheMathmo what are your plans around the @MathsInspiratn shows tomorrow? I'd like to pop into the first show and see you afterwards if poss but I've got a meeting 2-4pm

@icecolbeveridge @CounterOfSheep I think it's more of a friends-with-penefits situation

@elcaborotativo That's @TweetsofCushing and pals!

How can you write a whole article about 'shrinkflation' and not look at price per gram?
Just saying that some products are smaller and some have gone up/down in price and joining the two misses the point entirely.
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-428646…

THE WHOLE POINT OF THE ARTICLE WAS THAT THE 200g TOBLERONE DOESN'T EXIST ANY MORE

THEY'RE BASICALLY ALL WORSE DEALS!
This took me 15 minutes, including the formatting!

"While price cuts for products are not always in proportion to size reductions - it is not the case that customers are being short-changed all the time."

15 out of 19 sweets are worse value now. So by and large, customers *are* being 'short-changed'.

Victory, of a sort: @stecks has pointed out that the article now has a chart showing price per gram, and they've got rid of the "not being short-changed" bit twitter.com/christianp/sta…

I'm an hour and a half into trying to submit a one-line code fix to @moodledev. A lot of yak-shaving to get MDK to run and give me an instance based on the latest stable version.

Are you kidding.

@DavidKButlerUoA @mathequalslove ooh, I got addicted to Undead for a long time. It's just the right amount of thinking.

Still kidding?
This has been on the screen for like 3 minutes

@peterrowlett Congratulations! I've checked, and my first post on checkmyworking.com was in 2010: checkmyworking.com/2010/02/whats-….
I feel like that can't have been my first blog post ever though.

Currently reading: sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sig…

I'd be amazed if anyone can beat that. twitter.com/DrSMJames/stat…

I think my new office chair wanted to be the USS Enterprise instead

I've just discovered that Pearson have renamed "MyMathLab" to "MyLab Math".

I eagerly await "MathMyLab".

Never stop partying! 🥞🥞🥞🥞
It's fat American ones this morning, so that counts as a different meal, right?

Have YOU ever told a story so exciting your daughter spontaneously barfed?

On my way to #devacuk to talk about @NclNumbas and @MathJax, and learn about other spoddy coding things.

Just passed someone waving a chequered flag at my train. We... won?

@erickratamero should say: this is a fork of stackedit.io adapted for a particular student. The original site is best for everyone else.

Ooooooh! twitter.com/jtmaths/status…

@BTNMathsJam @peterrowlett @SOSMathsJam a*f(a-1) if a>0 else 1

@BTNMathsJam @peterrowlett @SOSMathsJam I think there's a language with a single command, 'compute n!'

Just saw an actual butcher's van with "Pleased to meet you, meat to please you" on the side!!!
My favourite chiasmus!

Frozen canal!
(coming from the North East, canals are a novelty, OK?)

I've just set up a separate presentation account on my laptop for my #devacuk talk.
Windows 10 has filled the start menu up with an astounding quantity of nonsense.

@statto Every time I need to check I've got write permission in a directory, I type 'touch poo'. Every single time.

BRB, printing that koala photo at A3 for my bedroom wall twitter.com/kitttenqueen/s…

@mathpunk @tweetsauce I'd guess it goes by checking everything up to the first power of 10 bigger than 9!

@Parcly_Taxel Ooh, nice! Thanks for pointing it out

Spotted a book with a nice title in the @NCLMathsStats library: "Plane answers to complex questions".
Can't work out if "complex" is punning on anything good though.
springer.com/gb/book/978144…

I love translations, me.
Very gratifying to see Numbas being used around the world.

Now getting sucked down the rabbit-hole of adapting the interface for right-to-left languages. twitter.com/NclNumbas/stat…

@stecks nice to see the computers-go-wrong-near-Katie symbol go wrong. #wrongception

What is "one month after January 31"?
I want answers you can justify, not "tool X says it's Y"

@miclugo What's one month after January 30?

@efrataitel More than that

The votes are in: the majority seem to reckon you go to the last day of the next month. Hardly anyone went for what was my favourite answer, "just February". I feel that's most accurate, if not most precise. twitter.com/christianp/sta…

@RobJLow anyone can insert words to make a (stupid) point

@ruimvieira Congratulations!

*makes copious notes* twitter.com/JSEllenberg/st…

@NewcastleUniUCU @UniofNewcastle ooh, I was planning on doing some baking this weekend, and on picketing on Monday. Let's see if I can get it together to do both!

@evelynjlamb sadly, none of 456789, 456987, 456123 or 456321 are prime

And this is why we're on strike.
DB (defined benefit) is how the pension currently works. DC (defined contribution) is how they want it to work.
uss-pension-model.com

@jonpenguin 1.5% did seem a bit high!

@aap03102 Ooh, that's a nice one!

@standupmaths A more robust hash that could cope with minor copy-edits might be to take all the nouns and adjectives, optionally sort them alphabetically, and convert to lower-case.

@standupmaths (then run through your hash of choice)

@ToonLibraries Ooh, dixit and mysterium!

@NewcastleUniUCU sorry, I don't think there's going to be any left tomorrow...

@mathforge @standupmaths I've heard the same story.

@jamestanton I'd love a concise way of saying "you're getting hung up on fitting this into one of the categories you already know about, why not just look at what it does?"

@solidangles @jamestanton But if it was called something like "a Lawson-Perfect error", I could just say "you're making a Lawson-Perfect error" and be on my way

I have known true fear: a tube of superglue exploded on my hand.
#justkeepscrubbing

Wow, @NewcastleUniUCU have run out of armbands for picketers. It's a huge showing!

I see this prime number every time I walk upstairs and for ages I've been meaning to take a photo of it.
It doesn't *look* prime

@AdamCreen Sure about that?

@elinoroberts That's to take to messy play, right?

@Criptacular @ucu @verbal_remedy Great article. I'm autistic and have dyspraxia and I picketed yesterday, for the first time. It knackered me.
Striking isn't just picketing - staying at home is also withholding your labour.
(Is there still an NCL autism group? Used to meet in a pub when I was a student 🙄)

Fairly sure I'm not a soccer wunderkind. twitter.com/RyanDeto/statu…

@CmonMattTHINK I'm very interested, but not sure how much time I have to give detailed feedback

@Andrew_Taylor Ooh, I like that one! A subtle variation on the usual innumeracy

@sangwinc That's much closer than I was expecting!

I've spent my #ucu #strike days working on this toy language for computing with dates. It can finally work out MathsJam dates! It's approximately as efficient as Peano arithmetic 😬

@RobJLow @sangwinc I think it's one of those things whose exact meaning only becomes apparent from context after it's used

This video by @Ayliean is the nerdiest thing I've seen in weeks: solving the Towers of Hanoi to a beat, with a different note for each colour of disk.
(on what looks like an ironing board, in her PJs)
youtube.com/watch?v=dZ08FQ…

I bought a print of this years ago, when I visited the National Gallery. Never decided what to do it, but it's a cracking picture. twitter.com/NationalGaller…

I'm looking for a reference about how students with things like dyslexia use calculators even when doing high-level pure maths, for basic arithmetic. My google-fu is failing me. Anyone? @DrSMJames

"According to a regulatory filing Icahn was able to sell his shares for $32 to $34. On Friday morning Manitowoc’s shares had fallen 5.48% to $26.37."

$26.37 is 17.59% less than $32.

So is 5.48% a single-day drop? Percentages are hard enough to report!

theguardian.com/business/2018/…

#leanin

Sorry, I've forgotten - can someone remind me whose this fog is?

WHY AYE! twitter.com/njj4/status/97…

What are some straightforward-ish things you can do to integers to produce another integer, and has at least 2 parameters?
I've got add/subtract/multiply by n; remainder when dividing by n; digit sum; gcd with n; lcm with n.
Not interested in square root - only one param!

@SparksMaths ooh, that's a good one

grows a bit too quickly - I'd like things that end about the same order of magnitude or smaller twitter.com/WoollyBenguin/…

@SparksMaths nice!

too easy - I want things that will take a couple of seconds of thinking, at least twitter.com/darrenjw/statu…

one avenue I'm particularly interested in: what can you do with the base-10 digits of an integer?

@BTNMathsJam nice!

I've made a little game to occupy my mind in a non-challenging way:
The Never-Ending Sum
christianp.github.io/the-neverendin…
It's like a colouring-in book, but for people who like doing sums.
I'm interested in ideas for other kinds of sums.

Oh, forgot to say: it uses some disgracefully new browser features, so wont work on anything more than a year old

@peterrowlett ?!?!

@peterrowlett Ohh, I see what's happening. Thanks for your continuing pedantry. Will fix.

@miclugo My wife agrees with you it's 'colouring book'

"snicker-snack went the vorpal sword into the jabberwocky's creamed truffled spelt with buttered girolles"
(this menu is trying too hard)

@Plattsc Thanks! Yes, see you then

@robeastaway @furthermaths The second one

If I've done things right, it should now be possible to add christianp.github.io/the-neverendin… to your phone's homescreen, for maximum idle summage

#superfan twitter.com/efrataitel/sta…

Snow is over (if you want it)

@statto the more crispy and extracted my chocolate, the better

@DrLucyRogers @standupmaths Graphemica's maths symbols section has 949 symbols - graphemica.com/categories/mat…
A few duplicates with different weights/sizes, and a lot that are just combinations of others. But "about 1000" is a decent order of magnitude for "symbols in use". Of course, anyone can make new ones

I can't not do this, now that I've noticed I've got four bottles, each made up of four parts

I've got an answer for this puzzle and it's absolutely done my noggin in.
mathstodon.xyz/@dudeney_puzzl…
Feels similar to that one about tying your shoelaces on a travelator

I've been trying to think of things to add to three.onefouronefivenine.com for this year's π day.
Anyone got any ideas? Maybe the continued fraction? twitter.com/aap03102/statu…

I'm picketing outside the Robinson library (currently on my own!) because it's not just lecturers who stand to lose out with the #uss changes

And just handed a leaflet about joining @ucu to a chap who says he's just starting his job this week. Hope he does!

@lyd_w @NewcastleUniUCU @UCUNorthern I love your strike comics! Cheered up a few students on their way into the library today too

@icecolbeveridge it's this little @aperiodical knock-off edited by young people

Just realised that if I accept the proposed #USS model of life expectancy growing 1.5%/year, then when I retire in 40-odd years, life expectancy will be double what it is now, i.e. about 160 🤨 #USSstrike

@jonpenguin Phew!

@Andrew_Taylor But I bet avocado is an absolute knacker to scrub out of train seat upholstery

It's #piday again! For reference, here are all the digits of π:
three.onefouronefivenine.com

@OlafDoschke Yes, the hard part is putting them in order

little Easter egg: you can keep adding digits to the URL - three.onefouronefivenine.com/twosixfivethre… - but it'll give you a 404 if you get it wrong - three.onefouronefivenine.com/twosixfivethre…

I also made these slides to go with a talk for #piday 2016, about different ways of calculating π: checkmyworking.com/misc/pi-day-20…

Consider:
Rounding 49.7% to 50% shouldn't raise any eyebrows.
Rounding 99.7% to 100% is 😲

@jjaron Passover starts on the 30th

This post has existed in draft form since 2014. I've now been on #USSstrike for so long that I got round to finishing it off. Every cloud has a silver etc. twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

Reckon I can claim it on expenses, @NewcastleUniUCU? #USSstrike

@stecks @bechillcomedian @AEOUD If you get the list of available items, we could knock up a script which picks a random combo for you to order each morning

@stecks @bechillcomedian @AEOUD Oooh, here's a terrible app startup idea: an app that automatically downloads the menu of the restaurant you're in and suggests a randomly picked order. Bonus points if it can make the order for you (eg at wetherspoons)

Back in Expiremont again. What scoince should I do while I'm here?

@AklMathsJam It's interesting but needs a MASSIVE table

This part of the world's like a misspelled geek paradise.

A puzzle castle! I wish we had something like this at home

Hands of bananas helpfully labelled for those who can't count?

@JSEllenberg Will you also enjoy a method that does not exist? read.somethingorotherwhatever.com/entry/Akritas1…

@TheHaitorean This was in a Leclerc in France

I wonder if l'expert comes from Les Mathes

Yet another geeky place name near Expiremont: there's a commune called Matha a bit north of here. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matha,_Ch…

A list of mathematical concepts named after places! twitter.com/drvinceknight/…

@TheTomGannon The @aperiodical has thousands of followers and always welcomes guest posts...

A Firefox extension which automatically puts Facebook in its own container, isolated from the rest of your browsing. Nice!
I suppose the other option is to prevent non-facebook sites from loading Facebook content blog.mozilla.org/firefox/facebo…

@Parcly_Taxel As a picture?

@peterrowlett V satisfying. Much more satisfying than my nephew's sorting toy, which has a hole at the top that all the pieces fit through 😣

@miclugo I have no suggestions, I just want to say you're definitely doing the right thing. Cook as much food as you can possibly fit in your freezer!

@FryRsquared @oliviawalch oh wow, that is spectacular!

@FryRsquared @oliviawalch brb, printing out the page with the moon god

@NewcastleUniUCU Weird, the options were displayed the other way round for me.

@My_Metro one of the doors on carriage 4021 is refusing to open. Will the driver be aware?

@My_Metro Front

Oooof.

That's the sound of my brain being simultaneously nerdsniped and screeching to a halt on reading today's Dudeney puzzle: mathstodon.xyz/@dudeney_puzzl…

100% truth twitter.com/benorlin/statu…

@mikegibson2010 Unfortunately, cooler heads prevailed and it's 'trits' en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trit

@matheknitician I have that book!

@BTNMathsJam @SmartGames_eu ooh, that looks interesting! What's it called?

@sxpmaths I saw that magic square and immediately went round the corner to the gift shop to buy a t-shirt of it!

I see Northumbria Uni have now got a crest instead of that silly swoosh in their logo: northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/our-n…
Their new site looks way better than ours!
What with this, and the pensions, the poly is looking quite appealing!

When I was assessed for DLA (never mind PIP!) I broke down in tears at having to list all the ways I struggled.
The doctor said "are you sure you're not just depressed?" twitter.com/LoomesGill/sta…

@smorgasbord @TfL THERE ARE DIFFERENT COLOURS?!

I know I said this months ago, but it's more true now: the end is in sight for my work on @NclNumbas v3. I'm at the end of my "must-have" feature list, and I've spent today writing documentation. Next: lots and lots of testing. 😅

@FOTSN I cannot allow a misspelling of the word 'Perfect' to stand uncorrected.

@robeastaway a while ago I read something about pre-metric units that persist in continental Europe. I wish I could remember what they were! Lots were to do with food

@robeastaway I wonder if that's been translated from American - it also has references to cups and tablespoons.

@robeastaway I'll consult my foodie mum, who is also a linguist and French teacher!

I love marbled paper so much twitter.com/MarshsLibrary/…

@jjsanderson need a hand?

@jjsanderson I've never used uwsgi, sorry.

@jjsanderson have you tried any of flask.pocoo.org/docs/0.12/depl… ?

In the past I've either used Apache+mod_wsgi, or supervisor to run the Python app on port 8000-ish and nginx as a reverse proxy. Reverse proxies will defo take a day or two of head-bashing though.

@theoremoftheday you know, the formula for conversion between degrees and radians might be enough to push me over into preferring τ over π

@statto or, more pertinently, on the order of 100,000,000,000,000,000 for every transistor that's ever been produced

A masterpiece of the "gather a few people from the office and put your nicest figures all on one slide for the marketing photo" form twitter.com/ConnectomeLab/…

I assume that some text in this paragraph on the @UKLabour disability access page is a different colour to hint that it's a link, but my colourblind eyes can't see it!
The contact page didn't make it clear how to get this comment to them either, hence this tweet.

Ah, the noble sound of a mighty Triumph conservethesound.de/en/sound-en/re…

@sangwinc It was in the IGCSE last time I looked. I agree entirely with that excerpt

@samholloway @JamieTheDyer @BBCNews Eunice?

@theoremoftheday I very nearly misattributed this theorem to Euclid just yesterday!

@stecks Yep that's defo it

Happy 13²-th birthday, Felix Klein!
Happy 5²/2², everybody else!
Happy 6th birthday, @aperiodical!

@standupmaths there's got to be a "Where's Matt?" in working out what flight you took based on the times of your tweets.

This has just reminded me I made an interactive punchcard simulator christianp.github.io/punchcards/ twitter.com/TeXtip/status/…

@stecks So did you work it out in the end?

@danieltybrown I had the same conversation with my sister-in-law recently. So, don't hold out hope of eating all your cake at any point in the future

@stecks the Lawson-PerGects receive your thanks.

@bengoldacre is the data that used to be on nerdydaytrips.com still in existence anywhere?

@Parcly_Taxel I agree. Still, it got people looking, and sometimes just knowing it's possible is a big help

@icecolbeveridge @suedepom @Pecnut No, it's more readily understood as a mixed fraction.

@sangwinc they haven't finished their big flashy rewrite, then?

"circle the number that is the same as the number of pictures" twitter.com/mafchauffeur/s…

@csgillespie It is. Pipenv is supposed to make it better. I haven't looked at it properly yet

@JimPropp I think you're supposed to spot that 10 shouldn't be multiplied by x. They're trying to get you to understand when things should have an x next to them - kids often sprinkle them about because they don't understand what it means

Recently I discovered a surprising fact about numbers, so I made an online web thing to give it the recognition it deserves.
Give it a go: somethingorotherwhatever.com/sum-of-3-palin… twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

@kiramaththan ahhh, it looks like it should have rotational symmetry but it doesn't!

@EuclidAcademy "0 is not a number" went out of fashion in the Renaissance.
I decided adding extra zeros was easier than changin my claim to "up to three palindromes"

@SparksMaths @EuclidAcademy I think the sense @EuclidAcademy is going for is: if I say "there are a number of people in this room", negative numbers, 0 and 1 are all invalid quantities of people satisfying that statement.
That's just one context in which "number" is used, though

(slightly embarrassed face: my testing code had bugs, so the code it was testing had undiscovered bugs. I think I've fixed them, and checked every number up to 10^7)

@Bishnavitch

@mathemaniac What about the eyes and mouth?

@miclugo Congratulations!

You can always get my attention with a zero knowledge proof. The sudoku one is ace! twitter.com/OddsAndEvening…

@Derektionary @panlepan nice idea!

@jjaron nah, the few millennials who are rich with inherited wealth or otherwise will consolidate their power. Why believe we'll look out for each other as a generation?

@jjaron I meant, why assume we'll as a generation attain political power, when we're not getting wealth?

@hnodrog @mathemaniac I thought that was going to be a link to youtube.com/watch?v=LYs_GC…

@jjsanderson remember when we all started using google because it didn't put adverts at the top like AltaVista and Yahoo did?

I especially enjoy the LED date display, just in case you (justifiably) think you've timewarped backed to the 1980s twitter.com/My_Metro/statu…

@getnorth2018 my colourblind eyes can't see the text in these boxes very well. I had to zoom in and max my screen brightness. Did your designers not consider accessibility while designing the accessibility box?! @colourblindorg

@jasonlikesbikes @colourblindorg @getnorth2018 now I'm in my office looking at it on a big screen, I can read it, but it's very low contrast

This looks good twitter.com/MarcusduSautoy…

@DanielColquitt your own?

@DanielColquitt depends on how much accompanying talking the slides need to be comprehensible. I use a format which lets me write notes alongside, but that's a lot of effort

@MrTilston glad it delivered on its promises :)

@getnorth2018 @colourblindorg @jasonlikesbikes it's really good that you've got that page!

it's come to my attention that some new calculators show recurring decimals with a dot above the recurring digit, instead of showing as many digits as possible. Is that true? Any idea what model of calculator does that?

@Mathematical_A ta!

Just had a real 'my hovercraft is full of eels' moment: Mrs L-P asked me "can you take the electric toothbrush to the undertaker and say it's for the tombola?"

@CounterOfSheep When I met my wife, my best friend gave me two pieces of advice:
1. Don't be needy.
2. Don't talk about your poos.

Yesterday I played Anomia for the first time. I think of it as "The axiom of choice: the game"
boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1422…

Oh but of course this is an autism thing!
Mrs L-P quite often writes me instructions for things like "when we're putting the baby to bed" and "how to do a washing load".
I'm not stupid, I'm just brilliant at missing a step out or completely forgetting a crucial detail twitter.com/ShonaDav/statu…

@ShonaDav is that Google Keep? I use it a lot to keep things I need to remember. Mainly ideas for birthday/Christmas presents for people, so I can just order when the time comes and don't lose a day to shopping stress

@solvemymaths @panlepan I'm missing something in Geometry Snacks #7. What fixes the angles in the smaller triangle?

@solvemymaths @panlepan phew!

Now I wonder how many people have (a) assumed that, and got the solution, and (b) not fully understood the given solutions, but moved on anyway

@Andrew_Taylor @stecks also very hard to type without then wondering why Nikolai Gogol had a number named after him

The baby's current status:

@crashMATHS_CM Question 1 looks wrong: I think you meant to have x^3 - 100x, not plus, in the numerator.

Yes please! twitter.com/merylkenny/sta…

@MathsTechnology @crashMATHS_CM and don't forget x=0!

@MathsTechnology @crashMATHS_CM 👎

@peterrowlett it should start with a few questions assessing how pedantic you are, to establish if you're a professional mathematician

@RobJLow @peterrowlett

First to implement this in a LaTeX package wins a Kit-Kat twitter.com/erik_kwakkel/s…

@mathforge go on then

@solvemymaths @panlepan one more: in the first solution to #16, I think you mean ADB' = 60, not DAB' = 60.

@solvemymaths @panlepan then in the second solution, do you mean MC instead of CN? (there is no N)

@lorentzframe is the code for that online anywhere?

@xacobeo2002 @lorentzframe Thanks!

criiiikey, was it really 4 years ago that I last reviewed mathsy games for @aperiodical? aperiodical.com/2014/09/some-m…

theguardian.com/business/2018/…
Article is about passenger numbers falling on the East Coast main line. To explain, cites people in London cycling more and getting Uber instead of the bus.
🤷‍♂️ 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

So not Brexit, then. twitter.com/JDF/status/998…

@AdamCreen are you any relation to Malcolm Creen, who works at Newcastle Uni?

@willkirkby in the vein of read.somethingorotherwhatever.com/entry/Kahan1998 ?

@C_J_Smith I see Calvin-livetweets-conferences season has begun. Half the stuff I know about teaching I learnt from your conference tweets!

At @NEWCMathsJam I remembered that I'd coded up a version of the "I can name your polynomial" trick I saw @DavidB52s perform at @MathsJam, but never put it online.
It's now at somethingorotherwhatever.com/name-your-poly…
It's quite a nifty trick!

Oooooooooh! twitter.com/ZenoRogue/stat…

Hah, this is an account I can get behind! twitter.com/red_green_plot…

@rooneyvision There's making your tower look like a willy, and then there's naming your tower like a willy. Top marks on both counts here

@MrHonner @Desmos I never thought of visualising that function! Nice!

@ColinTheMathmo Would Geogebra work?

@MrHonner @JimPropp @Desmos I would expect to see the lines x+y=n more clearly. Maybe they could shift right to (T_n, 0) in one step, then rotate around those points until they lie flat on the x-axis

@ColinTheMathmo @SparksMaths @k_houston_math @geogebra @Justamathnerd Inkscape is another option, if you just want to draw some shapes. The interface takes some getting used to though, more than Geogebra

@DrBennison @sxpmaths @NclNumbas @edhall125 I'm happy to answer any questions you've got.
I'm very keen to look at how the interface could change to better suit younger students - at the moment it's mainly used in higher ed

Shopping for stair gates.
"Green and red pressure indicator ensures safety".
Not in this house it doesn't!

@TimHarford but now I want a line of Princess Bride inspired Crayola colours. Indigo Montoya, Red Pirate Roberts, Main in Black, etc

@icecolbeveridge

@NewcastleUniUCU @BirkbeckUCU This is a subject I'm passionate about but... I'm mindful of my workload and don't think I can spare the time

WHY WOULD MY LAPTOP GO TO SLEEP WHILE WINDOWS WAS UPDATING?!?!

On my way to Edinburgh to deliver a @Ri_Science maths masterclass. Twice. My daughter was up all night with her first cold, so I'm feeling tip-top!

@peterrowlett @DaveDysonSmith sudden flashbacks to downloading PDFs of Le Monde while doing A-Level French

@solvemymaths @panlepan I've picked up your book again. In #29, what am I missing that forces the angle in the small triangle to be 90? It looks like the middle-sized square needs to have side length twice the shaded square. I can maintain the marked equal lengths without that

@panlepan @solvemymaths Phew! The proof didn't justify it at all, so I thought I was missing something trivial

@SparksMaths I think you'll enjoy this: use the logistic map to get a function which fits any scatter plot perfectly colala.bcs.rochester.edu/papers/piantad…

@SparksMaths yes. They pick it to hit given points at integer x, but let it go wild in-between

IMPORTANT GEORDIE NEWS
chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-eas…

@kyledevans We're within a week of that happening, I reckon. Thanks for the warning

@pwr2dppl it's quite common to have an existential crisis when you're tired. If you want to not be having an existential crisis, take deep slow breaths.

@pwr2dppl Yeah, I get the same, and the same trick works. It's like a slow-burn panic attack

@pwr2dppl It's funny how I care less about the extremely pressing issue of the uncaring cosmos in the morning

the stars of a very rare 2-term entry in the OEIS! oeis.org/A139410 twitter.com/wilderlab/stat…

@Andrew_Taylor finally, a counterpoint to all the listings and adverts in Newcastle that refer to "tram stops"

The high-pitched whine being emitted by this metro carriage is the sound of Summer 2018

Lawks! twitter.com/AdamBienkov/st…

Mrs L-P had a very happy accident at the photo printers

@robinhouston where's that t-shirt from?

Wondering if there's any joy in backronyms: taking the last letter of each word.
For example, ERM = threE letteR backronyM

I really enjoyed the latest episode of @Samuel_Hansen's Relatively Prime, about a maths camp: relprime.com/girlstalkmath/

@C_J_Smith "budding"

When people move jobs between Durham and Newcastle unis do they have to buy a whole new wardrobe?

@monsoon0 it's a balmy 18C here today, so not too different!

Got to applaud this international school doing web 1.0-style search engine optimisation in its website's title tag lis.ac.in

@ColinTheMathmo ooh crikey, that reminds me I need to pay!

Today: writing lots of code, writing tests, discovering code is wrong, fixing code, ad infinitum.

So high confidence and low ability today?

Most helpful statement of the year, from @ColinTheMathmo: "That's a list of 10 (in some base)"

tfw the smallest denomination of currency is way too large for the scale you chose

never mind #bigdata, I'm concentrating my efforts on the real future of mathematics: #bigzero

@solvemymaths I've just realised I'm in Huddersfield tomorrow and that's where you are! Would be nice to meet up.

@solvemymaths actually, sorry, I've just been told my services are no longer needed in Huddersfield! Oh well!

Getting into a shoebox: The Dog Way™

@Andrew_Taylor a span with class="sortkey" style="display:none"

@Andrew_Taylor a template for formatting number values, looks like: en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti…

@henryseg @JimPropp Sounds like an opportunity for @MathsGear

@C_J_Smith "dad bod poldark" is a glorious collection of syllables to roll around your mouth

I'm running a four-round instant knock-out tournament throughout the month of July to basically squeeze a load of fun maths out of my friends.
Let's see if we can make it all come together! Voting starts on the 1st of July. twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

Do you want ants? Because this is how you get ants!
#oneweirdtrick

@denmellen yeah, it's a very sugary sweet

This paper shows, among other things, that no hexagonal number is double another hexagonal number: arxiv.org/abs/1806.07981…

@pwr2dppl I don't like getting t-shirts or laptop stickers from events for that reason

Maths lecturers: do you use Maple TA, and can my research scholarship students talk to you about it?

@DanielColquitt @JoelHaddley Fab, thanks! @JoelHaddley, can my students email you some questions?

@SheckyR I think @standupmaths will be mightily offended to be called British!

I'd completely forgotten about this visualisation of a proof-without-words of the pizza-cutting theorem (geogebra.org/m/C9kMuwj8), mentioned in a @tweetsauce video that @JoelHaddley (the real pizza expert) just sent me: youtube.com/watch?v=SXgF57…

An interesting piece on mathematically modelling toxic work culture, with interactive simulations, by @mmmaaatttttt: mattlane.us/stories/dishin…

I had an idea about a dynamical system, then had a fun time coding it up in @glitch: resonant-geography.glitch.me

@jamestanton @knottedbowties @FictionConnect @ch_nira @aperiodical @sphs_maths @Beamathsteacher @Tiescou @FunkyNChunky_ I am greatly enjoying this bowties subplot to the competition.

@Pecnut This tweet gives me the cold shivers. Rather you than me!

@nomad_penguin @fyimaths Nice!

@Gelada @curvahedra now cook something on/in it!

@peterrowlett @ajk_44

@ajk_44 @peterrowlett

It's 2AM. Do you know where your yoghurt is? twitter.com/hersenprofesso…

@colmmacc If you were worried about RAND_MAX mod N earlier, shouldn't you also be worried about how quickly N! overtakes the number of states your RNG can be in?

And they're off! I can't believe I've managed to put this together. Hooray for maths! #bigmathoff twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

Round 2 of #bigmathoff starts in 10 minutes!

Maths: don't sweat the details twitter.com/Tony_Mann/stat…

Meanwhile, round 1 could not be any closer! aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

@ColinTheMathmo I do!

@Samuel_Hansen @peterrowlett @aPaulTaylor Hah! It's one of the most popular poll plugins for WP. That is a ridiculous bug for it to have

@mscroggs if I tell you the first poll is at aperiodical.com/wp-json/wp-pol…, can you work out where the rest are?

@mscroggs and please don't do anything silly like fetch that every second

Match 3! twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

I've updated my #bigmathoff wall chart. Have you?

@mscroggs outstanding!

@mscroggs and it's helped me spot that the Propp/Griffiths poll wasn't set up correctly

@nrichmaths @ajk_44 this is like ENG-BEL all over again - both sides want the other to win!

Another stat to look out for: will @aperiodical pass 10,000 followers before the #bigmathoff finishes?

40 minutes to go in the @Samuel_Hansen v @aPaulTaylor first-round #bigmathoff match, and there are only 8 votes in it. This one's going down to the wire!
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

@icecolbeveridge does everyone else know about n-tuple elimination except me?

@icecolbeveridge to consider for next year. A bit hard to follow along with, I reckon.

@icecolbeveridge ... its Only Connect. I don't have Victoria Coren-Mitchell's wit or taste for the whimsical to carry it off

@ColinTheMathmo it means don't rest on your laurels!

@ajk_44 you manage loads more interaction than I do

@ajk_44 Yes, it took me a long time to find that balance, and it is heavily weighted towards sitting-quietly

@peterrowlett @Gelada @aperiodical and if the umpire had any say in the matter, he'd get big points for that

@peterrowlett @Gelada @aperiodical (I just make the rules, I don't enforce them)

@Gelada @peterrowlett @aperiodical Famously named after me, of course

@mathhombre @Gelada @peterrowlett @aperiodical He'll have been friends with my great-great-great-great-uncle Notso, right?

@Gelada @mathhombre @peterrowlett @aperiodical I can't believe I'm making jokes about my stupid surname on twitter

Just half an hour to settle the @peterrowlett v @ajk_44 #bigmathoff match. Notebook doodling or notebook folding? Get your vote in!
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

The @Gelada / @ColinTheMathmo #bigmathoff match is hotly-contested: both have more votes than any other competitor so far, and they're only halfway!
I know Colin loves a graph, so here's one.

The #bigmathoff is paying off: I just showed @ColinTheMathmo's card trick to a student ambassador who'll be wowing kids with it at our primary STEM fest this weekend.

@Gelada @ColinTheMathmo 😉

Loving being able to watch my summer student coding in @glitch while he's sat next door

I just noticed a fact that I hadn't seen before, which I've illustrate with two examples over on Mathstodon, where we have LaTeX rendering:
mathstodon.xyz/@christianp/10…

What's the pattern?

@jjc578 @msbjacobs @Lisaqt314 @MathsJam that problem is veeeeery old!

@ColinTheMathmo @aperiodical @Gelada @aPaulTaylor Martha Matics has many tricks up her sleeves

yesssss it's working! Look at those tasty numbers! #bigmathoff

@aperiodical @standupmaths @mscroggs guess who forgot to set up a header image and corrected title for this post...

@Gelada @ColinTheMathmo here's the final graph. Edmund, just how many people did you canvass?!

There's still plenty of time to vote in the @evelynjlamb v Tiago Hirth #bigmathoff match. I really like this one - both things were new to me, a novel rope trick and an unusual holey space. Evelyn currently slightly ahead.
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

I'm setting up the posts for round 2 of #bigmathoff. The last two are currently in a superposition of states: I've got to write text as if all 4 competitors won their round 1 matches.

@Gelada @ColinTheMathmo I think we can all agree that Colin's is the connoisseur's favourite.
However, my love for aperiodic tilings is evident in the name of my website.

@mscroggs a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

I've finally enabled HTTPS on aperiodical.com! Phew, my host didn't make that easy. getssl (github.com/srvrco/getssl) saved the day

@evelynjlamb I haven't yet had to employ my Very Scientific method for breaking ties

@ReadingEuclid Is the Arabic printed? Would it be typeset, or an engraving?

@robbderkatz @aperiodical @standupmaths @mscroggs That is MASSIVELY intriguing

Half an hour to go in the @evelynjlamb v Tiago Hirth #bigmathoff match, and Evelyn is ahead by 35 votes. There's still time to swing it if rope tricks get you tied up in knots! aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

And at the halfway point in the Big Internet Matt-Off, @mscroggs is ahead by quite a way, which means @standupmaths will go through to round 2.
Prefer fruity #dataviz to matchbox #ML? Get your #bigmathoff vote in!
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

@c0mplexnumber Inkscape's clone tool is erratic as heck but can do basically anything you can think of

@matheknitician @mathhombre @stecks @evelynjlamb @aPaulTaylor Katie is forbidden from taking part because we basically need to stage an intervention to stop her doing unpaid work.

@mscroggs it's alright: the S is silent

At the halfway point in the @JimPropp / @ZoeLGriffiths match, and the airplane seating problem is running away with it!
Is the knot trick too unbelievable? Try it yourself! #bigmathoff

@icecolbeveridge @mscroggs @Andrew_Taylor @Mrrismithmaths @MathsJam well, that's now my entry. Next year's #bigmathoff needs to be absolutely byzantine

Half an hour left in the @JimPropp v @ZoeLGriffiths #bigmathoff match, and it's looking like a victory for absentminded flyers. Both competitors put a huge amount of effort into their pitches - have a look and a think, and vote!
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

What does it mean when you've peer-reviewed tons of papers but only published one?
Is there such a thing as PhD-by-standing-in-community?

I've made a thing which draws diagrams to compute divisibility by N in any base, using @glitch.
divisibility-diagrams.glitch.me

@cameronesfahani @theoremoftheday start at 0. Dotted line leads back to 0. First digit 1, move 1 green arrow round to 1. Dotted line leads to 2. Next digit 2, move 2 green arrows round to 0. Dotted line leads to 0. Final digit 0, don't move.
You finished on 0, so 120 is divisible by 4

@cameronesfahani @theoremoftheday It's awkwardly worded to save space. I'll have another go

I think the rectangular pattern in that divisibility by 22 diagram should be much better known. Would you have expected it?

This is divisibility by 98 in base 66. That's an interesting shape!

@cameronesfahani @theoremoftheday I've changed the wording - any clearer now?

@willkirkby @glitch like, technically, or the maths?

@willkirkby @glitch you're interested in the remainder when dividing k by N. Start with remainder 0. For each digit in k, multiply your current remainder by 10 (i.e. shift all previous digits left 1 space), then add the digit. Work mod N. If you end up back at 0, you've got a multiple of N

@willkirkby @glitch Dotted blue lines from space i point to (10*i) mod N. Solid green lines point to (i+1) mod N

@willkirkby @glitch I've written this, but in more detail, at divisibility-diagrams.glitch.me/what.html

@Tony_Mann @mathsjem Yellow card: simulation. Play on.

The best part of the #bigmathoff is the top-notch game show host patter I use in emails that only the competitors see.

(If you took part in the #bigmathoff and didn't get an email with a segue performed by a load-bearing pun, you may be entitled to compensation)

@Gelada @standupmaths @peterrowlett @aperiodical @mscroggs I'm now thinking about the time we were on Matthew Parker Street and wondering if this is a Talented Mr Ripley situation

@peterrowlett *may*

@CPANJGamble The vertices represent remainders. Like divisibility by 12 in base 10 has 12 vertices.

@SamHartburn "probably not possible" is like a red rag to a bull at MathsJam

@Gelada @peterrowlett @aperiodical There will be tomorrow

My brain clung on to this illusion until the very last frame. Wow! twitter.com/juliomulero/st…

My #bigmathoff wallchart is up to date. Is yours?

I quite like the look of my divisibility diagrams, collected together. Here are the diagrams for 1 to 12 in base 10.

@ajk_44 *takes a closer look at the accompanying images*

@peterrowlett @ch_nira @ajk_44 technically second place, the best kind

Email from hotel: "would you like to add breakfast to your booking, for just €23.50 per person per night?"
I don't spend that much on dinner! 😂

@MathWithWoody @c0mplexnumber @ngpshth Snap! twitter.com/christianp/sta…

@OlympicsProf @colourblindorg Pedantry: I'd expect there to be a selection effect leading to that stat being lower. Could say that 1 player on every team *should* be colour blind

@colourblindorg @OlympicsProf I think it's worth looking into. Selection effects in pro sports can be huge - like fencers are roughly 50% left-handed.

@ajk_44 What am I, your magic graph fairy? @ch_nira #bigmathoff

@CounterOfSheep @samholloway I'm in my early 30s and remember the Italia 90 themed memorabilia at the Happy Eater on the A1

Herringbone patterns are everywhere in The Hague. But that's not my most exciting tiling spot of the day...

... this Cairo tiling is! @evelynjlamb @panlepan

We might be out of the football but we're the sand castle champions Of THE WORLD!
(also: "Baldrick Buckle" is such an astoundingly British name it must be fake)

Looks like Baldrick might have won purely for not getting the horn and putting gratuitous totty on his sculpture, like basically all the other entrants

Although, kudos to the Irish entrant for protesting the prudishness of other nations (that was literally on his artist's statement) with an almighty slab of SAND HUNK

@panlepan @evelynjlamb @tessellationfan Crowne Plaza Hotel, Den Haag

Just realised I got the order of the #bigmathoff matches wrong and either @evelynjlamb or @ZoeLGriffiths only have 48 hours to write and send me their semi-final pitches. Sorry! All in favour of moving back to the 18th?

tfw when you're in a world heritage site but someone once told you a fun fact about the different ways of laying bricks so that's all you can concentrate on

Be still, my beating heart!

I love this legally mandated symbol at the bottom of an advert showing a person literally weighed down by their debt

@SheckyR @ZoeLGriffiths @ch_nira @standupmaths @Gelada How come you used surnames for men and first names for women?

When's the last time mathematical typesetting this good appeared in a newspaper? twitter.com/phalpern/statu…

Just over half an hour until the #bigmathoff gets going again.
Furthermore, I'm back from my holiday, so can return to thinking about FUN MATHS

@apgox he'll be paying tax on some of that $11 million

@NewcastleCC do you only publish these colour-coded calendars for term dates? Are they in text anywhere? newcastle.gov.uk/education-and-…
Very hard for my colourblind eyes to interpret! @colourblindorg

This gives me the absolute horrors: "let's take Cuisenaire rods, remove all the abstraction, and bolt on the completely arbitrary shapes of digits" touchmath.com/index.cfm?fuse…
But *of course* it's an American product

aaarrrrrr, I looked at it again and I'm angry again!

@Pyfagorass breadth-first, depth-first, ... length-first?

@peterrowlett I extremely approve

@Andrew_Taylor it is interesting that despite all of the other parts of the constitution going out the window, there's been no talk of the Queen intervening

The second #bigmathoff semi-final is starting in 10 minutes. Meanwhile, we're at the halfway point in the @ch_nira v @ZoeLGriffiths match and it's close! This one could go either way

@mscroggs @ColinTheMathmo @ZoeLGriffiths there have been a few swapped leads, but most notable was @ch_nira overtaking @jamestanton late in round 1. Was fairly close before that, but James was mostly ahead.

@mscroggs @ColinTheMathmo @ZoeLGriffiths @ch_nira @jamestanton the @Gelada v @ColinTheMathmo round 1 match also turned round after about 6 hours, and never really looked back. (This one's a percentage chart because the gradient went crazy)

@ZoeLGriffiths @mscroggs @ColinTheMathmo @ch_nira @jamestanton I see the rumour that I'm a magic graph fairy is spreading. Kiddle v Chamberlain was close, but Nira was basically always in the lead

@AliDaliBee @MathsJam Assuming equal numbers of each colour, and enough sweets to ignore change in proportions, 6/125, or just over 4%. Three 1 in 5 picks, and 6 orders the colours can appear.

Our maths e-assessment conference is fast approaching!
Free for students, reassuringly cheap for everyone else. Two and a bit days in gloriously sunny Newcastle, with some top speakers, and @getnorth2018 will still be on! What's not to like? twitter.com/EAMSConf/statu…

@getnorth2018 (I don't often tweet about work from this account, but when I do, I make rashly optimistic statements about the local weather)

@ColinTheMathmo @ajk_44 @mscroggs @ch_nira @aperiodical I'm glad the #bigmathoff made this conversation happen.
(I won't be at MATRIX because it clashes with the tiniest L-P's birthday. Nira, come to big mathsjam!)

@peterrowlett @ajk_44 @ch_nira but Zoe's name has an odd number of letters, while all the others in the semis have an even number. If you care about diversity *at all*, you should vote Zoe.
(Overthinking your vote is strongly encouraged)

I still have yet to break out my Extremely Fair method for breaking ties. Vote underdog if you want to see it! twitter.com/evelynjlamb/st…

As someone who took a pay cut to have a 4-day working week, for health reasons, this both gladdens and saddens me twitter.com/tentivetodetai…

Well, I've found the location for dinner on the first night of #EAMS2018 - chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/food-… @sangwinc

Name something that between one half and two thirds of people do.

VERY RELUCTANT RETWEET twitter.com/drvinceknight/…

Here's the final graph of the @ch_nira v @ZoeLGriffiths #bigmathoff semi-final. What a contest!
#graphfairy

Not keen on counting this as a thing you 'do', but good stat searching! twitter.com/Kevin_T_42/sta…

*pats head of daughter*

This baby can fit so much rice pudding in her

@nomad_penguin @Gelada Omg, we have an @aperiodical post on exactly that coming out tomorrow morning!

Forgot to post this photo from my holiday, of the saddest item in the toy shop: a pad full of extra sums and spellings to do on your holiday.
God help the kid that's given this.

This is why I married her: in-depth wee wee position knowledge twitter.com/Helen31098957/…

The @aperiodical has just passed 10,000 followers! Thanks for loving maths, everyone! Well done @peterrowlett, @stecks and everyone else who's contributed to the site

@evariste1832 @aperiodical Number, Colour, Shading and Shape. I've just spotted that I incorrectly changed the "value" column for Number - coordinate 0 should correspond to 3 shapes

I've finally managed to order a 3D printer for @NCLMathsStats! Whoop!

One for @wacnt - Proportion of UK train routes that don't go through London

@monsoon0 I take it D_n doesn't refer to the dihedral group here.
TikZ is something I'd gladly spend vast portions of my time on if I could. It's like magic!

Votey McVoteface! twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

@CardColm Looks like pm to me: one reflection, and translations

@CardColm but there's more symmetry if you add "swap colours"

@NEWCMathsJam I'll be celebrating a tiny relative's birthday tonight, but make sure you all look at the #bigmathoff: aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…
30 bits of interesting maths to talk about!

@ColinTheMathmo @aperiodical well-spotted; fixed

Following discussion of the names that @nrichmaths uses in its puzzles, I've made a standalone version of the tool I made to randomly pick statistically fair names for @NclNumbas, and put it on @glitch:
random-people.glitch.me
Randomly pick names following ONS frequency stats!

I just saw a roughly 1 in 1000 event: 10 males in a row, when I was picking any gender! twitter.com/christianp/sta…

oh no, 1 in 500, because I would've been equally surprised by 10 females

@reflectivemaths I thought I saw an ad for a Christmas panto yesterday, but it was for... a Summer panto?!?!

@peterrowlett @nrichmaths @NclNumbas @glitch I *knew* someone had generated names recently! Not clear from that site if names are picked uniformly

@jjc578 mathpuzzle.com is a classic.

12 and a bit hours to go in the #bigmathoff final, and @ch_nira is over 200 votes ahead!
Is it a done deal for applied maths, or is there a big swing towards fractions waiting to happen?
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

Just under an hour to go in the #bigmathoff final and @ch_nira is maintaining his lead.
I highly recommend listening to @Samuel_Hansen's #relprime interviews with Nira, me and @standupmaths: relprime.com/bigmathoff
Then vote!
aperiodical.com/2018/07/the-bi…

Magic is happening!

@peterrowlett @GKStill arg! I forgot it was doing this. I've closed the poll manually

@standupmaths @onceoffac @ch_nira I've always been very clear that math-off means math-off

@peterrowlett @ajk_44 I prefer to think of it as joint-second-last

Phew, that was fun! I've so enjoyed running the #bigmathoff, and seeing the 30 bits of fun maths that the competitors came up with.
I really appreciate all the positive comments from people following the competition.
Many thankyous to follow...

First of all, thanks to the competitors, who agreed to go along with what began as a very vague idea, and were all such good sports: @jamestanton, @Samuel_Hansen, @peterrowlett, @ColinTheMathmo, Tiago Hirth, @mscroggs, @JimPropp, @Tony_Mann, ... (1/2)

@jamestanton @Samuel_Hansen @peterrowlett @ColinTheMathmo @mscroggs @JimPropp @Tony_Mann ... @ajk_44, @aPaulTaylor, @evelynjlamb, @mathsjem, @ZoeLGriffiths, @Gelada, @standupmaths, and of course, the World's Most Interesting Mathematician, @ch_nira!

@jamestanton @Samuel_Hansen @peterrowlett @ColinTheMathmo @mscroggs @JimPropp @Tony_Mann @ajk_44 @aPaulTaylor @evelynjlamb @mathsjem @ZoeLGriffiths @Gelada @standupmaths @ch_nira Thanks to @stecks for providing input and her usual superhuman admin powers, @mscroggs (again) for making a ruddy CEEFAX PAGE! of the results, and @Samuel_Hansen for podcasting throughout.

I'm going to assume this happens to me daily now twitter.com/tim_jeffree/st…

@sangwinc @katemath There's something to think about in the possible combinations of ages you'll see, depending on the order of their birthdays. 2 options for 3 kids, but (n-1)! options for n kids?

it's a year since we bought our house, which means that _everything_ is coming up for renewal. Can I be bothered to shop around for each of the many suppliers involved in making a house habitable?

#sadmin

@lyd_w @ICCE52906275 UEL, the only university located on a runway

Imagining the size of a survey that would justify reporting that percentage to 3 sig figs. How many professional DJs are there in the UK? twitter.com/qikipedia/stat…

@kyledevans Would POP SONG'S FOR PEDANTS be both acceptable and infuriating?

By continued fraction approximation, 23.1% is incredibly close to 76/329 or even 3/13. Those are small samples!

@WoollyBenguin Good point!

Yes! When I hear colleagues complain about laptops in lectures, I want to say I wouldn't know 10% as much maths if I hadn't been playing FreeCell throughout my entire degree twitter.com/RobertTalbert/…

@denmellen @peterrowlett @aPaulTaylor I googled it: fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-u…
42 out of 182 wedding playlists submitted to fivethirtyeight. Barely enough for 2 sig figs. That fraction does indeed reduce to 3/13. Poor show, @FiveThirtyEight!

MMM?!?!

The form has gone on to tell me that I've submitted my own personal details incorrectly.

Ah, the unrecoverable error was to put a space in the middle of my postcode, like I did on the price comparison site, and because that's how postcodes work

... and someone hasn't done their GDPR audit properly: opt-out checkboxes for SMS marketing

Oooh, that's annoying of JavaScript:

> 1/0.00001
99999.99999999999
> 1000/0.01
100000

it gets worse!

>1/0.0000001
10000000
>1/0.000001
1000000
>1/0.00001
99999.99999999999

@peterrowlett yeah, the problem is with floating point numbers

@samholloway @peterrowlett I suppose the problem in JS is that not using the built-in floats is an absolute slog

@samholloway @peterrowlett 😲

@RobJLow @peterrowlett indeed

@jd_p ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!!!

The motion graphics at #icm2018 are pretty groovy!

Those vignettes about the Fields medal winners are absolutely excellent #ICM2018

Beautiful, humanistic videos about being a mathematician and doing maths. I'm a little bit emosh

@icecolbeveridge So it's Augustus' Laws and Abraham's Laws?

@icecolbeveridge I consider those to be the same thing

I let out an involuntary 'ooooooh!' when I came into the office and saw this. So pretty!
This is @henryseg's "Developing Hilbert curve"

@peterrowlett @icecolbeveridge According to this, Leonardo da Vinci called himself Leonardo da Vinci thoughtco.com/what-was-leona…

@icecolbeveridge @peterrowlett if I say "da Vinci", you know who I'm talking about

I've got a new laptop.
1) I need a new sticker for the lid
2) can I put up with this, or will my left hand become crippled after too much Ctrl+Fn?

@henryseg I downloaded the model from thingiverse and left it printing overnight.
thingiverse.com/thing:1696383
Isn't the future fab!

@GhostMutt it's got a numpad, so I'm considering remapping the - and + keys to page up/down

@GhostMutt I've remapped the - and + keys, and as long as I don't look down I think I'll be OK

Ooooh! polysphe.com twitter.com/zellersamuel/s…

@aperfect There's a numpad to the side, and I think I'm going to have to get used to using it

@DominiqueMassot Elles ne sont pas si chers: nous avons dépensé vers €400 (£400, mais c'est la même maintenant) pour la notre.

in "23 kg/m^2", what do you call the "kg/m^2" bit? Units formula, units description, just 'units'?

I want a word for the bit of notation, not for the abstract dimension/unit it represents

90% of the thinking behind my convoluted surname was a pragmatic strategy to get us and any children past the fascists at border control with less fuss. What's a surname if not a tool of the state, anyway? twitter.com/ukhomeoffice/s…

@ZoeLGriffiths you try saying it quickly

I was just thinking about this yesterday! In short: brand-new Fields medallist Peter Scholze thinks he's spotted a big problem in Mochizuki's abc proof twitter.com/stevenstrogatz…

@benjamindickman @QuantaMagazine drama!!!

@joonu75 @stevenstrogatz or this might be like "Is Thompson's group F amenable?" and drag on for decades

@CounterOfSheep Is there any other way?

Earlier, I'm not sure if I made a sign or a parity error: I tried to unlock the door of the room I was leaving, instead of the door of the room I was going into

@CounterOfSheep The impossible dream. I usually end up delivering postcards by hand

Spontaneous weetabix smiley

I don't keep up with youtube any more, but thanks to @evelynjlamb's newsletter for showing me this video about food labelling shenanigans by @vihartvihart youtube.com/watch?v=mxNPpt…

@aperfect uh-oh! ultimatelenshood.com

@PaulRodrigo2718 @Mathematical_A @edfringe London has Isaac Newton outside the @britishlibrary, at least.

Is this a standard 3d printer beginner's idea: a cube, and copies with double the volume, surface area, and side length.

@icecolbeveridge you can't nerdsnipe me into finding numbers which multiply by n=3,4,...,9, I've got real work to do! Not today, Beveridge!

@carolspringett5 absolutely. The one we've got, a Flashforge Finder, took about 20 mins to set up and got printing straight away. The software is v easy to use, download objects from thingiverse.com and press 'print'!
Resulting objects very sturdy.

@apgox now I feel bad about not knowing any Galois theory, again

@icecolbeveridge still not nerdsniped

@icecolbeveridge .... STILL ... not ... nerdsniped ...

I've just discovered that Blackboard have a page listing their patents. Among them is this absurdly broad one for "allowing something to happen based on who's asking to do it" patents.google.com/patent/US87630…

@willkirkby less ranty

Are chemists universally terrible at computers? I'm trying to find a downloadable set of spectroscopic data for the elements, and to call the pages I'm finding "web 1.0" would be to flatter them.
Does everyone just use a commercial package? Where's the open chemistry software?

Earlier on, a butterfly flew alongside me and I was like

Is this a meme?

I will never complain about the way mathematicians name things again: chemists have it way worse.

4 Herschel enneahedra, with parameters from 0.25 to 1. Next job: convince some naive youngsters that somewhere in this range there's a fair nine-sided die.

I'm doing some hard thinking about type systems, and getting serious impostor syndrome. I'm not a computer scientist! Whatever I end up with will doubtless be less than ideal in many ways. Hrm

@kyledevans Since the distance is constant, if it was a graph of speed it'd look the same *and* the axes would make sense

@ch_nira @aperiodical @JJrhule1 @IMAmaths @BB_STEM @GKStill @SophieBays @snezanalawrence Oh my god, the t-shirt!!! 😍
Well done @JJrhule1

The number for reception at this hotel is 1729.
Nobody else here is as excited by that as I am!

There's *quite* sine implied sexism on this sign, isn't there?

@stecks #femaleprivilege

I think of the baby as a black hole, and she's just reached critical mass: if food goes near her, it doesn't escape.

I could watch this all day twitter.com/dhabecker/stat…

Me, a mathematician, overthink things? Perish the thought!
#bikeworries

@peterrowlett

@OddsAndEvenings re the combinations thing in episode #18: massive spoilers, and a cool card trick, here: aperiodical.com/2012/08/davids…
@jamesgrime did a video about the exact lock you were talking about a while ago, but I can't find it

@jamesgrime @OddsAndEvenings That's the one!

@reflectivemaths Price of a pint of milk

There's lots of activity happening over on mathstodon.xyz, the Mastodon instance that @ColinTheMathmo and I run.
One highlight: ways of deriving the formula for the sum of squares without using induction mathstodon.xyz/@karenshancock…

I've been giggling for days at the idea of a Londoner trying to ask for directions to Swalwell

@Andrew_Taylor @matheknitician How often do you divide your dishwasher tablets up evenly?

What's the maximum distance I can orbit the Earth and still respond to an RFC 6238 one-time code challenge? @wacnt

@wacnt if I do some of the thinking for WolframAlpha, it can do it: just under 11,000 times as far away as the ISS, assuming we're using the default 30 second time step wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(spee…)

Peak waffleheadedness: I've just had to look up the title of the talks I'm giving next week, on the website that I wrote, for the conference I'm organising,

"I know, I'll start the working week with an easy five-minute bug" twitter.com/NclNumbas/stat…

@SamHartburn I'd imagine you have two proofreaders read the book, then do something with the number of errors only found by one proofreader

@icecolbeveridge @SamHartburn My brilliant plan not to read your blog right now has backfired

@mathsjem @aperiodical mainly @stecks' work. Glad you like it!

@jjsanderson pretty much exactly my reaction

I've woken up, had a shower, got dressed and eaten my breakfast, and the baby is still asleep.

If neat, handwritten notes about graph theory are what you want, this thread delivers twitter.com/MarkSukaiti/st…

it me twitter.com/PaxsonScience/…

oh wow, gvim renders emoji!

@BarneyMT1 Correct

@peterrowlett

@SallyJordan9 not that I've encountered!

@anniek_p hey, notation is a cultural object too

@theoremoftheday yes, that's her. Never had any contact with her, but after she died I was offered her maths library. I had nowhere to keep it and no way of collecting it :(

@theoremoftheday @LMS @SusanMOakes sorry, I know very little about her! I have a couple of issues of the Mathematical Gazette that she had pieces in.

I *very* nearly responded when Colin called my name in the latest @WrongButUseful podcast.
#playitcoolCP

Crikey, if I'd known how much love the @NclNumbas units extension would get at #vicephec18 I would've implemented it years ago!

I missed this while my RSS reader was broken: the brilliant blog Turismo Matemático has passed 1,000 entries! mateturismo.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/y-l…
I don't know how Ángel gets about so much, but I do appreciate it!

Ohhh, that's so clever! twitter.com/arcticisleteac…

@mscroggs @emfcamp That's superb!

This fits perfectly. *very* satisfying

@_james_wilsonn @colourblindorg I tend to awkwardly stand outside the door for half the journey or until someone comes out 🤷‍♂️

About to start a conference, realise there's no clock in the room. A quick bit of @glitch later... a-big-clock.glitch.me

@StackNewcastle hi, what time are the eateries open until today?

Uh oh, it's #hannahssweets again! #EAMS2018

I like the idea of MeLQS, currently being presented at #EAMS2018 - a structure for describing e-assessment questions, but not automatically translating between systems

The baby has learnt to say 'dada', or rather, 'DADAAA!!!!'
Eagerly looking forward to my next quiet moment, in about twenty years' time.

@FryRsquared have you heard of the film "The Laws of Thermodynamics"? Looks like your kind of thing: youtube.com/watch?v=NXUtq-…

@aperfect I like this photo a lot supersonicfeet.com/photograph/ove…

@standupmaths Like two diplodoci doing a mind meld

@C_J_Smith I have a secret second life in music at work that my wife knows nothing about

@Parcly_Taxel There are several every day

A local school has put up a banner boasting "Best A Level results ever: grades improved by 10%".

👏 YOU 👏 CAN'T 👏 INCREASE 👏 CATEGORICAL 👏 DATA 👏 BY 👏 TEN 👏 PERCENT 👏

Dear web-based Outlook: I never, ever want to continue adding text to a link after a line break.

Write the numbers 1 to N in a list.
Namer names a distance d.
Claimer claims a subset of remaining numbers such that no two are d apart.
How long does it take Claimer to claim every number?
This paper proves it's O(log log n) turns. twitter.com/MathPaper/stat…

A notational conventions question:
It's common to write "sin(x)" as "sin x", omitting the brackets. It's not just laziness: it makes the text less busy. "log log n" is easier to parse than "log(log(n))".
Which functions is it OK to do this for? Is "f x" OK?

@ThomasEWoolley @lsinfosec INQUIRING MINDS NEED TO KNOW

@apgox So my question is, under what circumstances is there a unique correct interpretation?

@RealityMinus3 @icecolbeveridge @samholloway so you'd always write "h(x) = f(g(x))" and not "h = f ∘ g"?

@Pyfagorass I've been asking for a pay increase for years, with no success. The public sector is less responsive to such things.

I was sure the twitter pedant brigade would be with me on this. Am I wrong? twitter.com/christianp/sta…

@aajohannas @icecolbeveridge @ChrisMaslanka Here's an example of "sin n" in use: users.auth.gr/~siskakis/sin(…

@Parcly_Taxel how does that first one show Beal's conjecture is false? Beal's conjecture is about integers, not matrices. I'd expect to see a counterexample: A,B,C coprime such that A^x+B^y=C^z

Another day, another important committee I'm on has scheduled a meeting for a Friday, when I don't work here 🤷‍♂️

@Parcly_Taxel ah, misread your original tweet

@icecolbeveridge sneak them into your local IKEA

@C_J_Smith and you'd travel 400 more...

@robeastaway I've long been unsatisfied with that slot, and now I've been asked to submit a puzzle for it. I possibly spent too long thinking about it. I came up with a puzzle that I like, but I'm not sure it'll work when only read out once. I'm very ambivalent about the whole thing.

@robeastaway yes. I'll DM you.

Sumaze is brill, and available on Android as well as iOS: mei.org.uk/sumaze2 twitter.com/kevinsmithsd/s…

Little victory lap down to the chocolate shop because the thing I've spent the week working on now works.

I'm working on a pattern-matching syntax and algorithm for mathematical expressions. Like an analogue of regular expressions, but for trees.
I worked out the last few missing pieces while talking with someone at #eams2018 last week.

Ich win ein Berliner

@peterrowlett ooh, I think I showed Joe that last year!

Saw this lovely, if slightly knacked, adding machine in the Sun Inn, in Morpeth.

@peterrowlett Is 'Notintone' the most disastrous misspelling of Nottingham ever?

@stecks You're too organised for your own good

@knotunknot @CoburgHouse @jcrennie1798 Ooh, I like that pattern a lot

@rooneyvision The station that makes you ask, "am I fuel?"

@monsoon0 @RobJLow @RowenaBall I was a cool dude who only carried a small backpack, until we had a baby.

@peterrowlett How would you visually distinguish an engineer from a scientist or a builder?

Now I wonder if these batch numbers are in binary

Finally, the formula for the perfect necklace, and it's not nonsense! twitter.com/theoremoftheda…

@blatherwick_sam I think so

@blatherwick_sam 10^2+11^2 = 221 = 13*17

@blatherwick_sam It's certainly not a coincidence that 1296 = 6^4. Solution is n=3+log(2)/(log(2)+log(3)) (thanks wolfram alpha!), so maybe he meant 648 on the right hand side

Unprecedented levels of style down at my minimum as I've inadvertently bought socks that match my shoes (according to Mrs L-P)

@Pyfagorass what a shouty man!

@ncl_LTDS can I pop down with some Numbas stickers and leaflets?

@ncl_LTDS I've left a canvas EAMS bag on your table

@peterrowlett crikey, and I thought my 1811 textbook was completist for including firkins!

eugh, now I have to prove this algorithm is correct

Write lots of zeros on a pad
fifty, then fifty more - and add
a 1 before them all
a 'googol' we now call
this giant number - not bad!

That's the entry for 'googol' in the Omnificent English Dictionary in English Form.
There are loads more mathsy words at oedilf.com/db/Lim.php?Wor…

@kyledevans Was that from one of those print-on-demand sites, or is someone making mandelbrot shirts at scale?

@Plattsc Hah, those are brill!

is there a thing like patreon where I do the fun things I was doing anyway for free, but you pay for the witty domain names I put them on?

Anyway, here's what I've made today: factorisation-list.glitch.me
A never-ending list of factorisations. Turns out that you can't scroll faster than the absolutely most naive algorithm imaginable can keep up with.

@wordisx thanks for that serious answer to a frivolous question. That's quite a name for a company! I'm surprised they don't insist on alphabet-only names.

yes.
reciprocals-list.glitch.me twitter.com/OHSMaths/statu…

How did I not know this? The decimal expansion of 1/2017 repeats every 2016 digits!

Fortunately, I've memorised my 97 times table twitter.com/ChrisHazell72/…

@BarneyMT1 No rule they anyone knows of: oeis.org/A006883

@sxpmaths Why require 4 colours of pen? I can only distinguish two in that photo

@sxpmaths I have protanopia (bad red cones), so basically no combination of colours works for me. I can use labelled pens, but they don't help me. All my schoolwork was in one colour. 1 in 12 boys are colourblind, so expect a couple in each class.

@soupie66 @sxpmaths Why not? Because *you* try determining the grade of pencil used to draw one side of a polygon

@ben_nuttall @MiniGirlGeek Crikey! I've attempted many hard things in CS, but never syntax highlighting

@MiniGirlGeek @InDesign @github Ohh, that's a very nice feature!

My beautiful red dualit hand mixer has died. Following a period of mourning, I am now looking covetously at v expensive hand mixers online.
In time, I might have the strength to look at the more feasibly-priced alternatives.

@mikegibson2010 2029

@FOTSN that difficult Nth tee after the nerd identity matrix. The only one of my maths t-shirts that continues to get unimpressed blank looks *after* being talked about

@advance_lunge is it an adding machine, or does it do something cleverer?

@GhostMutt Oh, it's online!

The new @numberphile video, where @jamesgrime (1) claims to be my friend, and (2) shows off somethingorotherwhatever.com/sum-of-3-palin…, is online!
youtube.com/watch?v=OKhacW…

@numberphile @jamesgrime as a demonstration of our friendship, I will be live-tweeting the number of views of the video throughout the day.
Currently, 2958 = 2002+949+7

@numberphile @jamesgrime It has increased to 3213 = 3003 + 202+8 while I was typing that.
Well, I started it, so I'd better go through with it

@numberphile @jamesgrime 3612 = 3553 + 55 + 4 (did that one in my head!)

@numberphile @jamesgrime 4641 = 4004 + 636 + 1

@unhiddenness @numberphile @jamesgrime Can you give a bit more detail?

@unhiddenness @numberphile @jamesgrime What browser are you using, on what device?

@unhiddenness @numberphile @jamesgrime Hm. What numbers did you try?

@unhiddenness @numberphile @jamesgrime found it. I introduced a typo while fixing something someone else reported. Try again now.

Back from some real work.
Now at 8204 = 8008 + 191+5

Last one before I leave work: 14994 = 14941 + 44 + 9

@mathforge Oh yes, good point. Thanks!

Since being mentioned on @numberphile a load of randos have sent me friend requests on facebook. What could they want?

@FOTSN will you be publishing this series of polls as a choose-your-own-adventure book?

Just flipped Trigg's 'Mathematical Quickies" open and found this lovely puzzle.

@icecolbeveridge latter

@icecolbeveridge otherwise you'd be obtuse not to write (ab)^2c

@icecolbeveridge oh, good point. It doesn't have to be, but it really looks like it!

@hollykrieger Is that a bit spongy to write on with the felt behind it? I had a blackboard sticker on a wall for a few years and you could really feel the texture of the paint behind it!

In addition to the colour problems, the vertical axis is area planted as a percentage of area planted in 2004, right? Otherwise it's a massive coincidence that all four crops had 100 hectares planted in 2004, the inflection point. twitter.com/seanhargrave/s…

@aPaulTaylor You know, I read that line several times and I never twigged that was what it meant

@blatherwick_sam What kind of error is this: in the bottom diagram, my first impression was that the square root is the size of one of the boxes.
Would only labelling the horizontal side have helped? I'm not sure, and I can't think of a clearer way of showing a square root!

What are the circumstances that lead to amazon selling CDs of albums for half as much as they sell the MP3 download version?

@profRoys 1986 also saw Chernobyl, and me. I take your point.

77992 = 444+77377+171. Three palindromes on my dashboard!

Now do 'subtweeting' twitter.com/GermanQuatsch/…

@mathforge @BBCTwo 0.05, 0.03 and 0.02 all look the same to me

This is the main reason I don't do pub quizzes twitter.com/mrdavidwhitley…

And in "absurdly precise numbers suspiciously close to 100,000 / 6" news... twitter.com/qikipedia/stat…

So, apart from my perennial gripes about @qikipedia's continuing citation-free problems with numeracy, this begs a question: what does a cheeseburger weigh six times as much as, or have six times as many calories as?

@Wolfram_Alpha says a cheeseburger weighs 200g or 7.1oz, which isn't six times anything, but it give 548 calories, which is close to 540 or 600. So a blue whale needs 9 or 10 million calories a day? Wikipedia says it's 1.5 million.

However, Wikipedia says a blue whale *sometimes* eats up to 3,600kg of krill in one day. 16667*200 is about 3,333kg, so we might be going by weight. But that's not every day!

Assuming krill have roughly the same caloric content as cheeseburgers (@Wolfram_Alpha doesn't know it), it looks like whales can eat 6 or 7 times their daily energy needs in one day. Wikipedia says they eat seasonally.
So that fact looks...

fishy.

😎

Actually, I'm not done with this yet: is 16,667 cheeseburgers more or less than I'd expect a blue whale to eat? Me to @itabn_andrew, which tells me 3,333kg is a bit more than an adult giraffe and a bit less than a shipping container. Or, excitingly, about 2500 human brains

And lots more comparisons besides: isthatabignumber.com/itabn/compare?…
It also tells me that 1 million calories is about 500 times a woman's recommended daily intake. So 10 million is enough for 5,000 women. That does seem like a lot!

@DavidKButlerUoA @awconservancy I desperately want a numbat mascot for @NclNumbas

@TimandraHarknes @kjm2 @StatsJen @standupmaths @stecks congratulations! I remember my small part in your homework-moaning journey.

That's really clever - this bottle of olive oil also has an expiry date for the prime minister. I wonder how they do that?

A few years ago, the BBC reported that Opeyemi Enoch had proved the Riemann hypothesis, and we (@aperiodical) immediately said "no, he hasn't" - aperiodical.com/2015/11/rieman…
Now, Sir Michael Atiyah claims he's proved it and we said "well, let's see".
Why the difference?

@aperiodical Enoch looked like any crank: went straight to the wrong venue - BBC News, not other mathematicians - didn't publish his proof in the open, and presented it at a very scammy looking conference run by Nina Ringo, who we've encountered before.

@aperiodical And we'd never heard of him. The false-positive rate for "anyone on the planet" with a claimed big proof is much, much higher than for, say, professors of maths in big universities.

@aperiodical So for all those reasons, we were fairly sure he hadn't done it, like I can fairly confidently say you're not holding a winning lottery ticket right now.

@aperiodical Atiyah, on the other hand, has a Fields medal, an Abel prize, and a very long list of publications. We still think he probably hasn't proved it, based on his other recent pronouncements, but he says he's going to present his proof, so we give him the benefit of the doubt.

@NasdaqCrypto @aperiodical nope. But @stecks is there in person

@aperiodical @stecks All three of whom lived to nearly 100, corroborating the statement 'if you prove the prime number theorem, you become immortal'
#HLF18

@aperiodical @stecks Todd function is a weakly analytic L^2 function of s ∈ ℂ, s≠0.
Maps the Euler equation to Euler-Hamilton.
Gives some properties of T(s).

@aa42john how about 3≈≈≈?

@robeastaway Determining what's true, and restricting yourself to the times that's a sensible question to ask.

Meanwhile, in other Serious Maths news, the OEIS mailing list is seeing its longest thread in years as the great minds of our age try to come up with the best pun slogan for the site, in French.
First offering was "toutes suites tout de suite", by Neil Sloane.

That Riemann hypothesis proof in full:

By the way, credit for that absolute classic of a cartoon is due to S. Harris of sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery/math/i…, who I hope won't mind it being copied just one more time.

@ZazzyAustin Good afternoon. Which one?

Very pleased with these Numbas numbers twitter.com/NclNumbas/stat…

Clever maths pals, how easy is it to come up with an integer-valued 5x5 matrix with a given eigenvalue?

whoops, I mean eigenvector

@robinhouston had a specific form in mind, for the purposes of a very nerdy joke, now sorted

@lyd_w The three genders

@sangwinc ooh, that's a very good ref, particularly in actually-accessible form at web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jds/Papers/li….
I had slightly different requirements, and came up with something which I've posted at mathstodon.xyz/@christianp/10…

@sangwinc while filing that away in my bib file, I spotted abstractmath.org. Have you seen it before? What do you think of it? I like the idea but actually reading it is quite hard

@BTNMathsJam @ColinTheMathmo I dunno, it does a pretty good job of showing there's variance in usage. Though their British definition of 'natural number' includes 0, which I don't think matches common use: collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/eng…

@robinhouston I'm amazed it doesn't use None!

This backfires when you ask the speaker how to pronounce their name, they mishear you and start asking about projector connections, and then you mishear that and very nearly introduce the next speaker , who you're very glad to meet, "veejee-ay".

(May have happened to me) twitter.com/DrRichJohnston…

Let's say that was the intended effect

@RobJLow @FryRsquared @aperiodical Linked in the post. That's the best look at the mathematical aspect I've seen.

@aperfect just used this. Let's hope it's accurate!

I invented a puzzle for the radio that didn't get used, so of course I put it straight on my blog.
Please have a go at it! twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

@aperfect a new clone of Dinopark Tycoon! rockpapershotgun.com/2018/09/25/par…

I know all but one of the digits of my new debit card.
WAIT! I KNOW SOME MATHS FOR THIS!
A quick bit of Luhn algorithm later, I confirmed my hunch that the missing digit is a 2.
Phew!

@extremefriday Worse: it's something nobody else can work out is wrong, so they assume it's a glimpse of genius and have it engraved on your gravestone

@peterrowlett @MathsJam I see we've both submitted talks about our children's toys

@monsoon0 the alternative is the way that chemists name things. I think the current way is the lesser evil!

@ZoeLGriffiths look at this! twitter.com/MathPaper/stat…

Just spotted that David H. Bailey has started posting "simple proofs of great theorems" on his blog: mathscholar.org/2018/09/simple…
This proof that π is irrational is about as straightforward as it can be: mathscholar.org/2018/09/simple…

Glaziers turned up at our house this morning with our new window. It's 10cm too wide, because somebody made a mistake converting imperial to metric.

WHY DID ANYONE USE IMPERIAL AT ANY POINT?!?!

it me I make bad joke twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

Your illuminati codewords for today

@mscroggs @chalkdustmag The plot thickens!

@timstirrup 🤯

@eleonorasfalcon the people who make the windows use metric. You might get a round number in imperial, but they're hardly operating at sub-millimetre precision

How do you feel about lines like this:

a = b < c = d

If you're skim-reading, and the terms a,b,c,d are quite long, you might not notice the < in the middle, and think that a = d.
Is there a better way?

@nershly it's not code. It's the kind of notation commonly used in maths

@benorlin let's just say I'm enormously thankful that G is only worth 2 points in Scrabble

@BTNMathsJam @stecks @benorlin @RobJLow furthermore, I can remember sitting at a table with him and @stecks in the bar

@FryRsquared @sophiechristoph congratulations! I supposed I'd better get myself a copy then

@stecks @benorlin Ben's a very unassuming chap. Terrible at drawing, though.

@ColinTheMathmo @Fuzzel76 it's like the 112th time for me, and it's still one of my faves (but it's normally Napoleon in my telling)

So many toy shops get this wrong: I select age 0-2 years, and they show me products designed for ages 2-3.
Those intervals should be open!

Me too! I meant to tweet about it, and entirely forgot.

Like any paper I've ever been asked to review. twitter.com/peterrowlett/s…

Just in case you don't know that panic attacks have a pretty much instant cure.
Best thing a doctor ever told me twitter.com/IanColdwater/s…

Graph diameter bants twitter.com/joncstone/stat…

There must be maths in this mistake I just made: I split a poster into a 6×3 grid of A4 pages.
I made the mistake of printing double-sided. I want to salvage as much as possible. I can't make two rows, but I can do every other column.
What's the biggest contiguous area I can do?

I can do a "comb" -
1,4,5,7,10,11,13,16,17
or
2,3,6,8,9,12,14,15,18.
Any others?

@ColinTheMathmo where's your graph of registrations?

@ShonaDav Every now and then my (android) phone gives me directions to where I 'parked', whether I've driven recently or not. So it may already be able to do what you want, but I have no idea how

Yesss this is the news I need news.com.au/lifestyle/home…

The PhD-by-hanging-around route is starting to catch on: the office staff are on board!
(please, nobody gatecrash these tutorials)

@ColinTheMathmo solipsys.co.uk/cgi-bin/MJ_Wik… and solipsys.co.uk/MathsJamRegist…

I've got a conic projection of the UK hanging up at home, but I've never seen a literal conic projection onto a cone before!
Photo at the end of this post:
mateturismo.wordpress.com/2018/10/04/el-…

Planted to commemorate the shortest meeting to decide the new chair of the corporate planting committee in history

@jjsanderson Can't spell mackerel without 'maker'! (where have you moved to?)

@jjsanderson Ooh, back at the coast near us! Hooray!

I've just discovered there's a horse called 'Matematica', whose mother was called 'Mathematicienne'. Not sure what to do with this information.
Any other mathematical horse names you can think of?
sportinglife.com/racing/profile…

@icecolbeveridge @samholloway sqrt(-1) often gives NaN, for example. Likewise acos(5).

@icecolbeveridge @samholloway that would be NaN

I got 108 problems but a warning ain't one

@tessellationfan omg: Hypoteneuse has four children: "Maths Prize", "Pythagorean", "Sextant" and "Longside".

... what happened to Shortside?!

@helenarney yeah but when's the jongleur coming to town to deliver the chanson de geste version?

@BarbaraFantechi @profkeithdevlin @monsoon0 Compulsory education finishes at 16, so you can't really make any A Level compulsory. We do have a fair few students coming to do STEM-ish subjects without A Level maths. Core Maths (stem.org.uk/core-maths) is meant to fix that.

@BarbaraFantechi @profkeithdevlin @monsoon0 lots of data on the government's website, if you can bear to trawl through all the excel files: gov.uk/government/sta…
The "main text" and "additional text" PDFs present the data fairly reasonably

Today in "the month is not a unit of measurement" twitter.com/GreyAlien/stat…

Currently thinking about this automaton: brindle-bass.glitch.me

Love this! twitter.com/SteevNewman/st…

There's either a set of bagpipes or an angle grinder a couple of streets away.

@FryRsquared @insimonated @ceekayell @ITVBe I've seen soft maths porn, and that, madame, was no soft maths porn.
vimeo.com/15492339

Which numbers are both a power of 3 and a cube?

@GhostMutt a power of 3 is " 3 times 3 times 3 ... times 3" some number of times. A third power, or cube, is "a times a times a" for some number a.

Which numbers are both a power of 1/3 and a cube root?

@j_lanier @hollykrieger Cars coming from where the kid is standing can't turn left.

Does this look plausible? @itabn_andrew twitter.com/HelAdams/statu…

@itabn_andrew I wonder if it's something like (amount a penguin wees in a year X number of penguins X number of years penguins have existed)

@SheckyR @evelynjlamb That was my favourite site for a while. I see my top one is at number 69! gaussfacts.com/view/Mathemati…

@FryRsquared I've just caught up with your programme. Is that guy for real?!

@C_J_Smith I love seeing how much you enjoy being a parent

@C_J_Smith my one got her first proper shoes yesterday. She's so cool!

@C_J_Smith @njj4 I think this was your 23,000th tweet. Made it a good one!

Hey @standupmaths, seen this? Calculator forensics: the result of arcsin(arccos(arctan(tan(cos(sin(9))))) on different makes of calculator rskey.org/~mwsebastian/m…

All in favour of renaming number theory "integerology"?

@hartkp what do you mean?

@hartkp ok

My daily Dudeney puzzle tooter over on mathstodon today picked this absolute whopper of a #FakeContext ratios puzzle: mathstodon.xyz/@dudeney_puzzl…

@suedepom someone on mathstodon commented that in Spanish it'd be 'enterología', which is even more medical-looking

I have received an email requesting tech support written entirely in Comic Sans.

Grumpy @stecks thinks I shouldn't get any credit for making an oblique reference to top Edinburgh restaurant the Ubiquitous Chip in the first line of this post. twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

@monsoon0 given how your PM turned out, that might not be worth celebrating

Inspired by a line in a textbook about imagining people standing in circles to show set membership, I've made a @glitch simulation of people spontaneously forming a Venn diagram: spontaneous-venning.glitch.me

@sblgpln @FryRsquared I have some code that can do that...

@ProfNoodlearms @MathProfBill Proof by adhesion!

@sblgpln @FryRsquared Not yet, it's part of a current project at work. I hadn't had the idea of applying it to portraits though, so next time I have some spare time I'll see if I can share something usable

@nillie_kj @aperiodical is that a real thing?

That's a nice magic square! mateturismo.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/el-…

@DavidKButlerUoA @samjshah2 I agree entirely

Ooh, this is pleasingly geometrical. I will make every effort to visit! twitter.com/_Artimage/stat…

I like the absurdity of using the wrong date format to get the wrong value of π to celebrate the subject that has been described as 'the art of not being wrong' twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

@llaisdy @sassilia12 @aperiodical 22/7 is probably a bit close to the end of the school year for a day that's supposed to be celebrated by teachers and pupils. Where I live, 22/7 is the last day of the school year this year.

@llaisdy @sassilia12 @aperiodical couldn't agree more

@miclugo what better day to celebrate counting?

@miclugo another problem with using a mathematician's birthday is stereotype threat

I've just finished "Inventing the Mathematician" by Sara N. Hottinger. It's about how we construct the idea of who can be a mathematician. I didn't need convincing, so I was hoping for some good ideas to counter the straight-white-male norm, which I sadly didn't find!

There was lots of "in the following chapter/section I will show ..." and "in the previous chapter I showed ...", which felt like it actually made the gist of the book harder to follow. My wife the sociology graduate says this is quite common, and it used to annoy her too.

The majority of the book is about mathematical 'subjectivity' - for those like me who don't know the way that word's used here, it's not the opposite of 'objectivity', it means "what kind of person we think about when we think about maths"

It's made me more aware of all the situations in which we reinforce a fairly exclusive idea of math subjectivity:

* textbooks mainly feature famous male mathmos, fine, we already knew that
* exercises rarely feature female/BME characters (I'm on top of that in @NclNumbas: numbas-editor.readthedocs.io/en/latest/exte…)

@NclNumbas * textbooks specifically aimed at girls and women help to include them as math subjects, never mind "girlification" - I *think* I already agreed with that
* for women, there's a tension between being 'feminine' and being 'mathematical', which is unnecessary

@NclNumbas That's made me think more about the contexts we use in exercises and examples: 'neutral' contexts are often coded more as 'male' than I had appreciated. We should more often use explicitly 'female' contexts.

The last couple of chapters, about mathematicians on postage stamps, and ethnomathematics, didn't do much for me. I'm not sure what the point was - just saying "lots of people see stamps, so that's an important factor shaping their impression of mathmos" would've done.

And I really didn't get the bit about ethnomathematics. She talks about how it's rooted in anthropology and all its colonialist baggage (no surprise), and gives a good example of a more reflective and collaborative study, but doesn't really offer ideas for how it should be done

Like, how *should* we incorporate maths outside the standard Western narrative in the story of maths?

Spend a month drawing Emmy Noether!

... I'm sorry, have you got something *better* to be doing? twitter.com/aperiodical/st…

@chalkdustmag I love maths magazines and jokes involving the numbers 7 and 9. Will I love your latest issue?

While waiting for the baby to wake up, I'm replaying Caterpillar Logic, a fun game about inductive logic.
play.google.com/store/apps/det…

Talking of deals you should walk away from... #PeoplesVote

@Bishnavitch Get an oven thermometer

I'm awake before my wife and baby today. I'm selfishly getting ready for work. Here's hoping she knows which end food goes in! twitter.com/manwhohasitall…

@jjaron Same idea as Crown Copyright?

@monsoon0 I prefer A8: looks like a snowman doing a painting

I'm a big fan of this Dudeney puzzle: mathstodon.xyz/@dudeney_puzzl…

it's very much in "I want to show you this cool thing I found" territory though, rather than something you'd realistically solve entirely yourself

@nazgar001 @SparksMaths @OxUniMaths @CardColm @CityLdnSinfonia oh, that tweet is doing a lot of work! Well done!

I had never heard that the standard trigonometric addition formulae have a really long-winded name: the prosthaphaeresis formulas mathworld.wolfram.com/Prosthaphaeres…

@monsoon0 at least 2