Happy New Year 2024! This post was published at 10 am London time, which is the time the new year, 2024, starts in Kiribati (Christmas Island). From Time and Date, we can see when 2024 starts around the world.
From Quanta Magazine, The Year in Math, features of Quanta’s video are described as follows:
Video: In 2023, mathematicians improved bounds on Ramsey numbers, a central measure of order in graphs; found a new aperiodic monotile; and discovered a new upper bound to the size of sets without 3-term arithmetic progressions.
Christopher Webb Young, Kristina Armitage and Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine
The Office for National Statistics has published a podcast, this latest episode of Statistically Speaking provides a review of 2023 in which National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, joins podcast host Miles Fletcher to look back over the past 12 months. The post, PODCAST: Year in Review 2023 describes the content which includes how thousands of new price points now inform the way we look at the economy.
For 2024, a very happy new year to all; I have created the annual look at number properties for the new year and links to NCTM’s year game to play with your students in January as well as other suggestions and resources to investigate 2024. I will keep this page updated with any new resources.
Transum Mathematics is a great source for Christmas Puzzles, for Christmas Eve, how many palindromic numbers can you find.
On the subject of Palindromes, a reminder of this investigation:
Try 89!
and from Numberphile…
From the University of Oxford, Mathematical Institute – two puzzles for Christmas and from Dr Tom Crawford, University of Oxford – 3 puzzles increasing in difficulty.
Dr Tom Bennison 2023
If you still need a card or two for mathematical friends – see this collection.
For the last few years, I have made Christmas Cards for students using Chalkdust resources, MatthewScroggs has designed the 2023 Chalkdust card. You can use an interactive or pdf version.
The GCHQ 2023 Christmas Challenge features seven complex puzzles “designed to test a range of problem-solving skills and encourage the use of teamwork to reveal the final festive message.”
For more puzzles, a search on the GCHQ site returns many puzzles to keep you busy! We can also search onChristmas, this search returns cards and Christmas puzzles from earlier years.
For arts and craft lovers – construct a Christmas card from Clarissa Grandi on Artful Maths. I see for 2017, Clarissa used Spirograph, a great idea for Christmas cards. As a child, my Spirograph was definitely a favourite toy, if you don’t have a Spirograph set you could use this brilliant digital version, Inspirograph by Nathan Friend.Try altering the gears so that the fixed and rotating gear are the same size, or make one size a factor of the other, make the two sizes have a common factor, or not! Investigate. You can change the colours too and create a work of Art! Now there’s an app too – Spirograph on your phone!
From AMSP this brilliant collection of short videos produced by the legacy Further Mathematics Support Program supports the Further Maths Specification. I have used many of these successfully in class and recommended them to students to support their studies. Look at any of the examination boards, AQA, Edexcel, OCR A pr OCR B (MEI) to see the comprehensive coverage for the course.
The AMSP videos which provide excellent specification coverage for AQA, Edexcel, OCR A pr OCR B (MEI) have been included for some time on the Further Maths Teaching Resources page.
On Mr Man Maths, you can find complete checklists for Edexcel Year 12 Core Pure, Year 13 Core Pure, plus the optional FP1 and FP2 modules. Mr Man’s checklists link to 6 YouTube channels.
To see the style for each channel, compare these videos on Loci in the Argand diagram. (The AJ Maths video on Complex Numbers does not include Loci in the Argand Diagram)
Now it’s December – you can open Transum door 1 to reveal this gem!
Transum Maths Advent Calendar
I do like this Dec 1st Transum activity. Use the given palette to make sure that all the trees are decorated differently – brilliant for thinking about systematic listing strategies. Note the different levels available.
Look at the collections on Nrich on Working Systematically.
Nrich publishes annual Advent Calendars – one for Primary (2023) and one for Secondary (2023). Both feature twenty-four problems, one for each day in the run-up to Christmas. Nrich states that the problems are ideal for working on collaboratively, either with friends at school, or with friends and family members at home. A real strength of Nrich – solutions will be published which are based on students’ work.
From Plus Magazine, see the Plus Advent Calendar 2023; this year, Plus revisits some favourite episodes of their Maths on the move podcast. For December 1st, Oli Freke explains how frequency is related to pitch!
“Whether it’s the maths of chocolate, new breakthroughs in pure mathematics, or the mathematical sound of music, we hope you enjoy this selection of Maths on the move episodes!”
Plus Magazine December 2023
Both Nrich and Plus Magazine have published such good collections of Advent resources; clearly, for an Advent Calendar, the year does not matter so we have lots of choices! See for example this whole collection of advent calendars on Nrich; note the different themes available – a Sudoku for each day perhaps? The 2016 Primary Calendar featured tasks to encourage mathematical habits of mind something we need to encourage in students of all ages.
Or try his Advent Calendar for 2023; behind each day (except Christmas Day), there is a puzzle with a three-digit answer; solve the puzzles to help Santa!
It’s nearly Christmas and something terrible has happened: a machine in Santa’s toy factory has malfunctioned, and is unable to finish building all the presents that Santa needs. You need to help Santa work out how to fix the broken machine so that he can build the presents and deliver them before Christmas is ruined for everyone.
Matthew Scroggs – Advent 2023
Keep an eye on Mathsbox for the 12 links of Christmas and enter the competition for a chance to win a subscription. If you are on X, then watch for the links from @mathsbox1.
From the brilliant Mathigon site, we have 2023 Puzzle Calendars, puzzles are revealed at 9am GMT every day in December and solutions are available on the following day.And perhaps have a look back at their puzzles from earlier years…
From the brilliant Mathigon site, we have 2023 Puzzle Calendars, puzzles are revealed at 9am GMT every day in December and solutions are available on the following day.And perhaps have a look back at their puzzles from earlier years…
Mathigon 2021
Looking again at some of these Advent calendar resources, I think many are useful for end-of-term Christmas activities for examination classes. In this category we have for example:
J Calderwood has provided three Advent Calendars – Advanced Higher, HIgher and N5 Maths for Scottish Students. A great revision resource that could be adapted for different courses.
Alternatively how about a Christmas Revision Calendar from Access Maths? Three Christmas Calendars are available, one for KS3, and two for GCSE – Foundation and one for Higher.
On Control Alt Achieve, Eric Curts will be wrapping up 2023, by sharing some of his favorite “Cool Tools”…
As we wrap up 2023 I will be sharing 24 of my favorite “Cool Tools” from this year, with one new entry per day from December 1st through 24th (sort of like an EdTech advent calendar).
For this year I am going with the theme of artificial intelligence tools and resources, since that has been the hot topic.
Eric Curts – Control Alt Achieve
In Eric’s post, Cool Tools 23, you can see several ways to check out each entry, including an advent-type slideshow.
