Isnt maths cool

Complex lines with i-arrows again

October 03 2024

Once upon a time (in 2016), I created a way to visualise where the complex points are in relation to the real plane, and then more recently (in 2022), I modified it to become the concept of i-arrows. I reread those blog posts recently while updating the blog to the new website, and I got all interested in them again. Here is what I’ve been working on over the last few weeks.

Gerry-mean-dering

August 12 2023

A recent video from Howie Hua showed how if you split a collection of numbers into equal-sized groups, then find the mean of each group, then find the mean of those means, it turns out this final answer is the same as the mean of the original collection. He was careful to say it usually does not work if the groups were different sizes. Which got me to wondering: just how much of an effect on the final mean-of-means can you have by splitting a collection of numbers into different-sized groups?

Introducing Digit Disguises with a small game

July 08 2023

Because [reasons], my game Digit Disguises has been on my mind recently, and reading the original blog post from 2019, I suddenly realised I had never shared my ideas on how to introduce the game to a whole class at once.

Where the complex points are: i-arrows

July 26 2022

Once upon a time in 2016, I created the idea of iplanes, which I consider to be one of my biggest maths ideas of all time. It was a way of me visualising where the complex points are on the graph of a real function while still being able to see the original graph. But there was a problem with it: the thing I want, which is to see where the complex points are (or at least look like they are) is several steps away from locating them.

My first Maths Teacher Circle

January 25 2021

Last week I participated in my first Maths Teacher Circle. I just want to do a quick blog post here to record for posterity that I did it and it was excellent. I choose to take the practical approach of just relating what happened.

Quarter the Cross: Connect the Dots

November 15 2020

This blog post is about a new variation on the classic Some resources linked from this post: problem, which I call Quarter the Cross: Connect the Dots.

Number Neighbourhoods

September 05 2020

This blog post is about a game I invented in February 2020, the third in a suite of Battleships-style games. (The previous two are Which Number Where and Digit Disguises.)

Where the complex points are: on a real circle

August 31 2020

In 2016 I created the iplane idea, which allows you to locate the complex points on a real graph. Ever since I had this idea, I have wondered on and off about the complex points on a circle. It's time to write about what I've found.

Quarter the Cross: Colouring

August 25 2020

Quarter the Cross is one of my favourite activities of all time, whether in maths or just life. I learned about it way back in 2015 and have been mildly or very obsessed with it ever since. This blog post is about one particular version of the Quarter the Cross problem you might like: the colouring version!

Where the complex points are: on a complex line (again)

May 03 2020

It's been four years since I came up with the idea of iplanes as a way to organise the complex points on a graph, and in the intervening time I have thought about them on and off. For some reason right now I am thinking about them a lot, and I thought I would write down some of what I am thinking.