Learning about maths today can be an exciting, colourful and rewarding experience, particularly if you explore the NRICH website! A hundred and fifty years ago life was very different for the majority of children. Not everyone went to school, and those who were lucky enough to get an education had to learn things the hard … Read more
In the time before the mathematical idea of randomness was discovered, people thought that everything that happened was part of the will of supernatural beings, the gods, who looked down upon human affairs and decided to ‘tip the balance’ one way or another to influence events. Hence, sacrifices were made and rituals performed to discover … Read more
Things are either equal or they aren’t – mathematically speaking, at least, right? Not so fast, says Eugenia Cheng in her new book, Unequal: The maths of when things do and don’t add up. In mathematics, as in life, some things are more equal than others. Take equations: the really interesting ones assert a sameness … Read more
As a science journalist, there are some stories that you return to again and again. There is climate change, of course – the biggest story of our time. Then there are the big questions, such as “what is consciousness?” or “are we alone in the universe?”, and so on. But one of the stories I … Read more