The Mathematics of Oz: Mental Gymnastics form Beyond the Edge This is a math puzzle book, and quite a nice short sci-fi story as well. It follows good ol’ Dorothy , as an alien (Oz) captures her, her faithful companion Toto and the entirety of Kansas to perform odd experiments. Particularly mathematical experiments on Dorothy [...]

Hey, let’s play a game! I’ve got 4 dice here. We both pick a die, and then roll to see who gets the higher number. And since you’re my guest, I’ll let you pick your die first, and then I’ll pick mine. Sounds good? Oh, I almost forgot to mention. My dice are numbered a [...]

We math geeks like to play. And one thing we like to play with a lot are series. A series is an infinite row of numbers following a certain rule, all added up. Let me show you two examples: S1 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + [...]

I’ve been taking buses for a long time. One thing I noticed is that the buses are fullest in the city centre. Now that’s kind of obvious. After all, most people who take the bus are going either to or from the city centre. It makes sense the buses are packed full of people there. [...]

Yeeey, we’re back with another edition of throwing cats! Last week, I showed you what happens when you throw a cat out of an airplane. Today, you will find out what happens when you throw a cat into water! Please note that this time we’ll be using an idealised mathematical cat. It’s going to stay [...]

Ah, division by zero. One of the first things that math teachers start ramming into pupils’ heads. They say “You cannot divide by zero!” with as much vengeance as Gandalf shouting “You cannot pass!”. But they usually don’t give you any reasons! It’s more like “You cannot never ever divide by zero!” rather than “Here, [...]

Here’s a fun question! What will happen to a cat if you throw it out of an airplane? Are you ready for the answer? …In fact, nothing will happen to the cat! Because if something WERE to happen to the cat, you would get killed by rain! (Wait, what?) Okay, okay, I’m getting ahead of [...]

Hi there, I’m Vlad, and I’m one of Leeds Math Geeks. Some weeks ago, I was browsing the internet looking for math blogs (it’s a long story). And one of the most interesting blogs I came across was The Math 152 weblog. After digging around a bit, I found out it’s a blog maintained by [...]