5 March 2019

5 Maths Gems #105

Welcome to my 105th gems post. This is where I share some of the latest news, ideas and resources for maths teachers.

1. MathsPad
As usual James and Nicola from MathsPad have shared lots of excellent resources with subscribers in their monthly update. Their pie chart tool is great!
This month they also shared a free set of fun cross-sequences puzzles that you can access even if you don't subscribe. I've added this to my algebra resource library.

2. Similar Triangles Problem
Thanks to John Rowe (@MrJohnRowe) for sharing this problem. Similar triangles spiral to form a regular decagon. The task is to find the length marked with a question mark.

3. Missing Steps
TickTockMaths (@TickTockMaths) shared an activity where students complete the missing steps.

You can download his algebraic fractions PowerPoint here. Check out all of Richard's free resources on his blog or on TES.

4. Maths Frame
Ted Burch (@Mathsframe) has converted all his free maths ITPs from Flash to HTML5 so they will work on any modern browser. These interactive tools are useful for for both primary secondary teachers. They are very easy to use. There's loads to explore so do check out the website.

5. Posters
This lovely set of STEM role model posters will brighten up school corridors and provide good talking points.
There's also a nice set of downloadable 'Forces of Nature' posters from Perimeter Institute which includes one of my favourite mathematicians, Ada Lovelace.
Update
It's all been a bit crazy lately. On Saturday night I hosted Matt Parker's book launch in London. Thanks to all the wonderful people who helped out on the night and all the wonderful guests, it ended up being an utterly brilliant night. I had such a good time and loved every minute. After excellent and thoroughly entertaining talks in the amphitheatre from Matt Parker, Jen Rogers, Rob Eastaway, Tim Harford and Dan Schreiber, we ended the night with a show from FoxDog Studios which was the funniest thing I have ever seen! There was loads going on in the reception room too, including James Grime with an Enigma machine, Ben Sparks with 3D Geogebra, Andy Sharpe with Nrich maths games, and Chalkdust with their awesome magazine. Plus of course there was a self-playing piano performing a previously unannounced superpermuation. And the best goody bags ever.
Here's a video of my 180 guests (mostly maths teachers) thoroughly enjoying the interactive show from FoxDog Studios.


Thank you so much to everyone who came, and to our friends at Jane Street for the ridiculously generous support. I think it's time for me to retire from my event management hobby because there's no way I can ever top this one!

In other news, my books have now been printed. These books are for students (not teachers!) - they are designed to help them learn all their facts and formulae for GCSE maths and science. Please either bulk order for your students or point them in the direction of Amazon using these leaflets. I have explained how the books work in this short home video.
I'm ridiculously tired from the book launch (turns out that planning big events at short notice is a bit exhausting!), but still very much looking forward to #mathsconf18 in Bristol this weekend. I do love a mathsconf. I will have some samples of my books if you want to have a look. I will also be doing a talk about unit conversions (a technical glitch meant that people were unable to sign up to it for a while, but there is still space so please come along!), and I'll be helping to run the MA bookstand along with David Faram. Do come and say hello at some point if you're at the conference.

I'll leave you with this calculus comic from XKCD.












2 comments:

  1. Very interesting......Thanks for the share

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the interesting news. Now we are actively trying to interest the youngest son in mathematics)) I want to do this in the form of a game, so I'm looking for different logic games. Now we have chosen a beautiful calculator for him - https://bestcalculators.net/best-casio-calculator-reviews/ He is so funny trying to count all that is in the house)) I hope your books will also be in our collection.

    ReplyDelete