A Brief History of Mathematics...

Marcus du Sautoy’s Radio 4 history programme, A Brief History of Mathematics, is being repeated this week. It’s on air at 23:30 and 23:45 (two programmes per day). It’s also available via the iPlayer for a very limited time, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00srz5b. [UPDATE: The programmes are available as podcasts: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/maths.] Bonus: If you are a student at Leeds, then you can find the DVD of his Story of Maths in the Edward Boyle Library: http://lib.leeds.ac.uk/record=b3030457~S4. We also have a recording of his 2006 Royal Institution Christmas lectures, The Num8er My5teries:...

Letting Dead People Do Your Work For You...

What does this origami figure have to do with mathematics? And in particular with circle packings? Almost everyone has at some point in their life made an origami figure. Probably not one as difficult as the above. By far the easiest and so most popular are planes, hats and boats. In restaurants you can see napkins turned into fans and swans. Paper folding is an art form. From your imagination you change a square piece of paper without cutting or tearing and produce something artistic. So we might think it has nothing to do with mathematics. In the following TED video Robert Lang shows just how wrong one can be. I particularly like his statement at the end This often happens in mathemaics and the sciences… problems that you solve for aesthetic value only … turn around and turn out to have an application in the real world. You can find out more at his website:...

10 Ways to Think Like a Mathematician...

Welcome to my new blog. I’ll be writing about mathematics — doing, learning, teaching– and maybe anything else that strikes me as interesting. First, I have a short pdf to give away: 10 Ways to Think Like a Mathematician. Please distribute it if you like it or are inspired by it! The booklet is a taster for my book How to Think Like a Mathematician. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting videos for the book. Stay...