Big MathsJam

Want to know what the MathsJam Gathering is like? This video has past attendees sharing their favourite bits! Book now at mathsjam.com/gathering/uk youtube.com/watch?v=ZM465b…

To find out more about this year's MathsJam UK Gathering, and for future updates, follow us on Mastodon (@bigmathsjam@mathstodon.xyz) or Bluesky (bigmathsjam.bsky.social) - we won't be posting on here going forward.

News! If you'd like some MathsJam merchandise, to remind you of your favourite UK recreational maths event, or to show off to others about it, you can now order stuff from our online shop: mathsjam.teemill.com

Once again I had a wonderful weekend at @BigMathsJam, seeing old friends and making new ones. Lots of exciting and inspiring maths to think about! Huge thanks to Colin Wright and the MathsJam team for all their hard work which made it such an enjoyable event.

And for our final MathsJam talk of 2024, it's @meredith_martyn, who wonders how many of the 2,200 passengers on the Titanic shared the same birthday? Was there one birthday which gave passengers increased survival odds? And most importantly, how many of them were called Sam?! 6/5

@Pecnut @pozorvlak Facing a problem with needing to represent too many layers of geographical features while working with a en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_field Miles describes how the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhol… came to the rescue. 5/5

Our final session of MathsJam 2024 begins with @Pecnut, who tried to compare packs of tomatoes in a Californian supermarket and got confused - in the US, pre-packed fresh veg can be sold by both mass and volume inconsistently, including the use of the perplexing "dry pint"! 1/5

Huge thanks to everyone who was involved in making this year's MathsJam UK Gathering happen - we hope you had a great time, and we look forward to seeing people again next time! Safe travels home everyone!

We have attendees sharing stuff on Mastodon too, and we'll boost the best ones from the @BigMathsJam account there: @BigMathsJam" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mathstodon.xyz/@BigMathsJam 2/2

Hope you've seen and done lots of fun stuff this weekend! Don't forget to share anything fun you've seen/done (with permission of anyone featured!) using the hashtag #mathsjam, and check out what others have been sharing too. 1/2

@RealityMinus3 Bonus photo feat: the big mathsjam wasps

@Tony_Mann @AlexDBolton Then we end with @MathsNetty, who advocates for a better narrative in probability puzzles: rather than it always being coloured sweets in bags, what other examples can we use? 4/4

@Tony_Mann @AlexDBolton Alex shows using a probabilistic method that 10 points can always be covered, and shares a set of 45 points that cannot be covered. For more, read this paper: 2012.cccg.ca/papers/paper13… 3/4

We start this session with @Tony_Mann, who has recently learned about the remarkable number TREE(3), and shares his findings - enjoy these Numberphile videos: youtube.com/watch?v=3P6DWA… youtube.com/watch?v=IihcNa… 1/4

@Andrew_Taylor @tomrocksmaths @Keke_Thom Lastly, @IceColBeveridge has been playing the roguelike hyperbolic-space game HyperRogue, and has been stuck on the "Camelot" puzzle, in which the player needs to find a holy grail at the centre of a 28-cell circle. It's harder than it looks! @icecolbeveridge/113141323397790575" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">mathstodon.xyz/deck/@icecolbe… 5/5

@Andrew_Taylor @tomrocksmaths Our next talk is from @Keke_Thom, sharing a series of Venn Diagram poems linked to a DARE art residency with Opera North, University of Leeds and the National Science and Media Museum. 4/5

Starting the next session, @Andrew_Taylor shares some quirks of the way computers do arithmetic - including a value called "minus zero", and another that's not equal to itself. He looks at how and why compromising on the normal rules can actually make computers more useful... 1/5