Street Maths

Street Maths

Edmund Harriss
University of Leicester
@gelada
www.mathematicians.org.uk/eoh
Saturday, 14 November 2009

What is mathematics?
Large numbers?

PhD student: I have started a maths PhD

Elderly Relative: What’s that then,
multiplying and adding very big numbers?

PhD student: No, its mor...

Elderly Relative: What?! Are you LAZY!


This is 1 million points it
becomes a blur

Even when I double

Maths tools:


Why is this understanding important?

We have (quite recent) way of expressing
1 numbers very well, expressing them is not
the same as understanding.
1000
Especially when we say them...
1000000
1000000000 Nice idea, look at time...

So why is this important...

One: 1 second
One Thousand: ~17 minutes
One Million: ~11 days 14 hours
One Billion: ~32 years
One Trillion: ~32,000 years


xkcd: http://xkcd.com/558/
...they can be used to mislead. At the moment the classic example is in the
sums being talked about.

If people are to take full advantage of an open access system they need to
be able to think.

Mathematics is about clear thought.

How do we get mathematics out there?


These two Lengths
are incommeasurable

Start with a legend

Two images of pythagoras, neither really him, so we will take Wrong! Bad!
one to be Hippasus

Legend says they were in the pythagorean cult that worshipped
Drown Him!
whole numbers.

With whole numbers you get ratios.

But Hippasus said...
Hippasus
and so...

This is a legend, there is almost no historical evidence. But that
does not matter, the story is important. People tell it because it
sounds ludicrous.

Maths is free. You cannot patent maths.

We have a different problem, once you have built something how
do you make people come...
Incommeasurable
Is there a barrier of education/training?
Pythagoras
Lengths

Ramanujan

Clerk, with basic maths
education but willing to
explore.

Worked at the cutting
edge of maths...


Robert Ammann

Marjorie Rice

Played with ideas and discovered new
tilings.

Where did their ideas come from?


Martin Gardner

Godfather of street maths

Got ideas out there

Ammann after Penrose

Rice read one of his columns

You might say there is something elementary or naive
about this work

Yes, but that does not matter. This is not about creating
new maths (though that is a bonus) its about getting
people doing it...

so how...

They are...


Playground proof
So we have
established maths There are a lot of ideas here. Kid B has grasped
important, it is open a proof. There is no highest whole number.
and people can do
it...why don’t they? However hard Kid A works he cannot make a
number that Kid B cannot beat with one
We have all been told
how useful maths is.

It would be useful for
Kid A: One squagillion,
phrase.

me to keep my
receipts organised,
but I don’t zillion, katrillion,
godzillion,gajillion,
On the other hand I
am one of the “lucky”
ones. I always found
maths exciting.

umptillion, trillion,
Possibly too much so.

Meeting a group of
friends with the
sunday magazines, I
looked over
entranced. What a
great tiling! million, billion squared!
I was mocked.
Standing in front of
the tiling was Natalie
Portman

So...how do we get
people interested... Kid B: Plus one


ac e?
ill Sp es
es F /sh
ap
ap gs.org.
For some

uk
Sh
Maths is fun:

o ww.tilin
d w
Puzzles, Games

owhttp://
Summer Exhibition

H Mathematicians playing


For others:

Maths is beautiful

Maths art, concrete art


m e
H i zu
ge. or g/

A k io .sta
rca
ww
://w
http
Both of these are still top down.

Lots of people do sudoku, are they learning to think? A little but there
are limits.

People can look at pictures and find them beautiful without trying to
understand them.

Akio Hizume. Projects to build, to walk through...to DO

Want to get people doing maths

Present them with opportunities to build themselves

If you have to make something you have to engage at a lower level

Paper polyhedra

Street maths is about getting people involved and creative with
maths. Putting it in front of them, but also building something.


Project that started it...

Make triangles

Hinge

People do the work...


Then need people to build it.

But also to design it...

Started with a talk on symmetry

Made models: No symmetry

People built models and then voted on which we
would make.

Smashed model


5/
y st emx.php
re S de 5
/in ._
lp tu s/w _No
b.i m
bla ste
Scu . fa Sy
ww re_
://w lptu
ttp cu
h S

Final result

The design is open

WANT other people to
make them.


Hyperscope.

Mirrors.

People can build (or even
design) then experience a
world of negative
cur vature.


auss
-S tr
an
dmthb
oow.ma u n. c om

G
m tp://ww
h ai age
C ht
ain _P
33 ex.p
20 i/ind h p/M
th /wik
a du
M k. e
.u ar
20 33 Big influence on me:

ath
://m
Bamboo maths company.

http Teaching this to students


ati cs
th em
Ma
in g
D o Gett
ing th
e ma
teria
Street maths is:

Doing/building mathematics.
l out
Gettin

f op en
useo
M ak ing
tru cti on/
sc ons
ac ces abs
F abL

Street Maths

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