Interesting Facts

Mathematicians from the  University of Limmerick  are working out a mathematical formula for the perfect cup of coffee. (They have found that size does matter, and flavour is linked to the coffee grain's surface are.  The method of extraction describes the movement of the coffee from its solid form as a bean into its liquid form when it dissolves into hot water, and they have found that small grains give a more bitter taste, whilst large grains result in a weak brew. Earlier in 2016 some chemists got together to create this video:- Reactions goes on a quest for better coffee through chemistry. )

4 / 4 / 16 Square Root Day - The 4th day of the 4th month of the 16th year. 4 2 =16 4x4 = 16 The next square root day won't be until 2025.  Can you work out what date it will fall on?

The Twitter hashtag #EdexcelMaths popped up all over the internet following  the GCSE maths exam paper from Edexcel (part of the Pearson group).  It contained a question about someone called Hannah and her bag of orange and yellow sweets, and caused a hilarious Twitter storm. (Tweets like this:- flooded the net over the following question:- Hannah has 6 orange sweets and some yellow sweets. Overall, she has n sweets. The probability of her taking 2 orange sweets is 1/3. Prove that: n^2-n-90=0 According to the Independent, this is the answer:- There are 6 orange sweets and n sweets overall. So, if Hannah takes one, there is 6/n chance of getting an orange sweet. When she takes one,, there is one less orange sweet and one less overall meaning that the probability is now (6-1)/(n-1)=5/n-1. To find the probability of getting the orange sweet both times, multiply the two fractions: 6/n* 5/n-1 =30/n^2-n. It shows the probability of taking two orange sweets (1/3) i...

According to a study from Indiana University, gender stereotypes about women's ability in mathematics negatively impacts their performance. (Mary C. Murphy, assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at IU Bloomington, who oversaw the study said, "It's one of the ways women end up under-represented in science, technology, engineering and math." If you tell someone they won't do well, you are pretty much planting a seed of negativity that is more than happy to grow.) Source

According to a study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, teenagers in the UK would be more likely to study maths at A-level if they were told what salaries it would help them earn in the future. (Telling students that pupils who received the information on graduate earnings were 39 per cent more likely to study maths than those who did not. Now if they could only convince them that maths could get you onto the X-Factor, and help you become famous, the take up would be 100%.)

Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to be awarded what is considered the most prestigious prize in math , the Fields medal. (Ms Mirzakhani has been a professor at Stanford University since 2008, but she is also the first person to win this medal from the Middle East, as she was born and raised in Iran. The Fields medal is considered to be the Nobel Prize for maths, because strangely there is no Nobel for mathematics. All 52 previous winners of the award were men.)

If you want to do something that no human has ever done before, shuffle a pack of cards. (When you shuffle a normal pack of 52 playing cards, the number of possible permutations is ‘52 factorial’ otherwise known as 52! or 52 shriek. This works out as 52 times 51 times 50 ... all the way down to one, which gives you the sum of   80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.) Source: QI

Maths really can make your brain ache. (Researchers from the University of Chicago have discovered that fear of maths can activate regions of the brain linked with the experience of physical pain. In fact, the higher a person’s anxiety the more it increases activity in regions of their brain associated with visceral threat detection, and often the experience of pain itself. If I'm honest, German grammar has the same effect on me.) Source

Pi has been calculated to its two-quadrillionth digit. (Yes, using computers at Yahoo to crunch the numbers, a researcher, Nicholas Sze, has calculated the 2,000,000,000,000,000th digit of the mathematical constant pi.  It took 23 days on 1,000 of Yahoo's computers, but don't try this at home, on a standard PC, the calculation would take around 500 years!)

A 15-year-old mathematics prodigy is set to become the youngest undergraduate at the University of Cambridge since 1773. (Arran Fernandez was home-educated in Surrey, and now he's going to start studying at Cambridge at the tender age of just 15. Cambridge has not accepted anyone his age since the 14-year-old William Pitt the Younger was offered a place in 1773. So, 15 years old and home-schooled - good luck young man, be nice to him all you Cambridge dons and no ragging!)

16-year-old Mohamed Altoumaimi, an Iraqi immigrant living in central Sweden, has written a formula to explain a number of complex relationships dealing with Bernoulli numbers. (Mohamed, who moved with his family to Sweden six years ago, figured out the Bernoulli sequence of rational numbers, something that is normally reserved for much more seasoned mathematicians.)

According to a study by Learndirect people in the UK have to use maths skills up to 14 times daily and literacy skills 23 times a day. (I'm sure I use my literacy skills more often than that. Maybe I need to keep a record.)

powered by ODEO Poor maths is costing UK shoppers £800m a year because they don’t notice when they are short-changed. (That and the fact that many of us are too trusting and don't bother to even check our change any more.)

According to a mathematical study, by Neil Thomson, the best properties to buy in the London version of Monopoly are the orange ones - Vine Street, Marlborough Street and Bow Street. He used probability matrices to come up with this. (He also said that the key is to buy every street you land on, and to put hotels on one set before you put houses on another. He added that the stations are rubbish, but the utilities are even worse. - Now I know where I've been going wrong all these years.)

The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing "is equal to" in his equations. (Seemingly he chose the two lines because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle".)