Carnival of Mathematics

Hello, and welcome to the 126th edition of the Carnival of Mathematics. For those of you who are unaware, a “blog carnival” is a periodic post that travels from blog to blog and has a collection of posts on a certain topic. This is one of two Maths Carnivals, the other being Math(s) Teachers at Play, the current edition can be found here.

Some interesting facts about the number 126: it’s a pentatope number, decagonal number and a pentagonal pyrimadal number. It’s is also palendromic in quinary (1001).

So a carnival with such an interesting number must surely include some interesting posts? Well there are some classics, but first this from one of my pupils: “Sir, I know why you wear glasses….. They help you with di-vision! ”
Now the posts:

Shecky Rieman send us this post on Oliver Sacks, saying every Carnival this month should make some mention of Dr. Sacks, but not sure how many math posts were done on him, since math wasn’t really his genre.

Ben Orlin has given us this post which uses “The smartest dumb error in the state of colorado” to discus the history of multiplication.

Bit Player have this exploration of a prime generating sequence.

Marginal revolution looks at an interesting dilemma for drug dealers.

Diane Jolie sends us this post looking at Ada Lovelace.

Carnival protectors The Aperiodical have plenty of posts since the last carnival my favourite are This on game theory in the new York times, This on pentagonal tilings, and, of course, puzzlebomb!

Denise at Let’s play math has this review on an interesting looking puzzle book.

Ed at solvemymaths.com has given us these Maths Mr Men, and this awesome area puzzle, amongst other stuff.

Colin at flying colours maths has loads of great posts including this from the mathematical pirate on circles and this from the mathematical ninja on why it works.

Tom at mathematics and coding has been extremely busy recently and my favourite post is this on that damp quotient rule.

Emily at I love maths games has been setting up her new classroom, including this great maths meme wall.

John at Math hombre has this on MacMahon squares.

Dave, the stats king, over at reflective maths has this lovely collection of maths puzzles. (I have my own here.)

Kris Boulton has posted this great piece on the identity symbol and it’s importance.

Sam Shah has This on bliermoins, cyclic quadrilaterals and cross chords.

Manan at Math misery talks about developing mathematical fluency.

Maths in the news: Katie has sent this from the BBC discussing Alex Bellos new eliptical pool table and many more interesting things about conic sections. Handy as I’m teaching them at the moment so I dug out this old post.