Notices by Alison Kiddle (alisonkiddle@mathstodon.xyz)

Hello, clever maths friends. Here is a thing I've been thinking about this morning. Most monthly mathsjams meet on the penultimate Tuesday of the month. My local mathsjam meets the following day.

Usually, this is the penultimate Wednesday of the month, but over time, how often should I expect it to actually be the last Wednesday of the month instead? And does it bunch together with lots of exceptions in a clump, or are they spaced nicely?

Candle in the bathroom. What do you notice? What do you wonder? What mathematical questions occur to you?

Today I'm putting the finishing touches to "The Hidden Maths of Knitting", my talk at Mathsworld in London next Tuesday (https://mathsworld.com/events/Knitting for tickets). I will be demonstrating an actual working knitting machine in my talk, as well as talking about just a few of the ways maths and knitting are intertwined. It would be great to see some Mastodon buddies there, if only so you can nag me and remind me to toot more regularly!

Choose any five consecutive positive whole numbers, and multiply them together. Did you get a multiple of 120? Will you always get a multiple of 120? How would you convince someone?

Official #Mathsjam 2024 Mathscots picture (not to be confused with the Maths Scots picture)

Day one of big #Mathsjam has been a big overwhelming blob of fun and also overstimulation. I'm running a Circle Theorem Badges table this evening helping people make badges with their favourite circle theorem on. And then hoping to chill out with some craft - I'd love to go to Mathsjam Jam but I suspect it would be Too Much 🙁

A little #NoticeWonder for you.
My wondering was this: what other patterns could I make with these tiles?

@KarenCampe I love the harmonic mean!

@annika nice, thank you for sharing. I deliberately didn't specify whether it was half the journey by time or distance, because I wanted to see which of those would be the natural assumption

@GreenSkyOverMe I left it deliberately ambiguous to see whether/what people would assume!

Here's a question that I'm interested to know how people will answer:

I'm travelling by car. If I drive for half the journey at 60mph and half the journey at 40mph, what will be my average speed for the whole journey? How did you work it out?

I just got caught out by a fence post error! I'm currently sewing together blanket squares, and I cut off lengths of yarn long enough to do two seams, and got really confused that I had half a length left after joining eight squares, and it took me a beat to realise eight squares meant seven seams

As a mathematician, one reason I find it hard to keep my house tidy is that tidying up involves categorising things. Some of these decisions are easy - books belong on shelves, non fiction organised by theme, fiction alphabetically by author. But some decisions are hard, and this is why traditionally most houses have drawers for 'bits and bobs' - stuff that isn't easily categorised. Most of my house is currently bits and bobs 🙁

I'm not normally a fan of fibonacci but I did enjoy Howie Hua's explanation of a neat trick to impress students in today's Math-Off: https://aperiodical.com/2024/07/the-big-internet-math-off-2024-quarter-final-2/ Vote for your favourite here!

@goatsarah @ColinTheMathmo in the words of a great Roman, Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it.
Sorry, autocorrect. Should have said "Ronan".

It's the Big Internet Math-off! Go and read these two excellent pitches about cool maths, vote for your favourite, and then do it all again tomorrow.

https://aperiodical.com/2024/07/the-big-internet-math-off-2024-round-1-match-1/

@goatsarah as always, love to see you living your best life 😍

Today in Duolingo being creepy: I just got a notification "Your friend is on fire!" Thankfully it meant they had completed many lessons in a day, rather than "We won't extinguish them until you practise your Italian"...

All ready at Epping Library for some half term mathematical origami fun

Best moment in today's maths fest talk: explaining the setup to Monty Hall problem to a teenager and asking which prize they would want to win, and getting the answer "A goat!"