Mathematicians, the unsung heroes of research from The Age, in Melbourne

Hello to all reading this blog. I try to read my local paper from Melbourne as often as I can and the other day there was an interesting article about the amazing research that mathematicians do.

They aren't racing through ten problems to check the answers, they are problem solvers working on long tasks checking and reflecting on their work as they go.

Please enjoy this article by Andi Horvath about

Mathematicians, the unsung heroes of research

IFLScience‏@IFLScience

If you track the relative positions of Earth and Venus over an 8 year period, this is the resulting pattern. pic.twitter.com/oRbXDxVVIB

from the wonderful sharing world of Twitter

Babies named Cheese and a graph

"(b) The correct number of babies who should be named Cheese is zero. "

An interesting little piece on babies named Cheese.

Nature's Shape - is it the HEXAGON?

In MYP2 on Loy Krathong day at school we had another look at nature's shape by watching another cool video from The Code from the BBC.

So many great questions come from this video.

Oh, we also learnt that waveboarders go beyond the normal times tables. Waveboarders know their 180 times tables because of the turns they make/take on their boards.  Very cool!

Sad Little Square Song, inspired by wanting more...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tetrahedron.gif

In MYP4 we've been looking into the Platonic Solids.

Thanks to Kaya of MYP4 for this Polygon Song

Maths and Fashion

If you are interested in fashion or architecture, this article sent by my sister has something for you.

Read about it here

What is Nature's Shape? Does it have a shape? What's your favourite Shape? Do circles make you happy?

In MYP2 we are looking at patterns, and how to communicate what we see using the language of mathematics. This then becomes something we can use to make predictions.

Our Unit Question is "What is nature's shape?" Do you know?

Here is one of my favourite patterns and some of my favourite Mathematics.

Some of my students said "no! anything but Fibonacci" when I first mentioned patterns this year.  That made my mathematical heart and soul ache with sadness for my students. There is so much incredible beauty in nature that can be communicated by the incredible versatility of Mathematics.

I hope this helps to spread the joy and curiosity


Here is the Vimeo Channel of their work.

And if you'd like to get deeper into how they made the video (using gorgeous mathematics) please check out the blog that goes with this video right here.