Two academics have shocked themselves and the world of mathematics by discovering a pattern in prime numbers. Primes – numbers greater than 1 that are divisible only by themselves and 1 – are considered the ‘building blocks’ of mathematics, because every number is either a prime or can be built by multiplying primes together – (84, […]

So, in relation to my last post, here is a puzzle that appeared in a Simpsons Episode – centered on baseball. Can you figure out the attendance at this game? For a complete explanation, check out this 12min video here.

These talented young dancers are doing a routine for a judge – who will score them using their numbers. Above them are two more numbers, making the sequence 5, 7, 2, 5 or (top to bottom) 7, 5, 5, 2. My students enjoyed coming into class and, when seeing four numbers on the board, trying […]

Prime numbers are cool. As Carl Sagan points out so eloquently in the novel Contact, there’s a certain importance to their status as the most fundamental building block of all numbers, which are themselves the building blocks of our understanding of the universe. Whether it’s communicating your credit card information to Amazon, logging into your […]

As the new year approaches, you may be (or not be) interested to learn that the largest known prime number is 274,207,281– 1. This number is an incredible 22 million digits long and 5 million digits longer than the second largest prime number. Hang on to your primes you might ask, “Why are prime numbers important? […]

A few years ago an old school textbook that H3 used explained that 1 was not a prime number “because of the Liquorice Factory”! The attached pdf is a great worksheet for students (and other readers of this blog) to examine the kind of machines that we need in order to produce liquorice in lengths […]

              The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has done it again! The project has just discovered the largest known prime number: 257,885,161-1. This massive 17,425,170 digit number, was discovered to be prime (ie. divisible only by 1 and itself) on 25 January on the idling computer of University of Central Missourimathematician, Curtis Cooper. As well as […]

Prime Spirals: Because prime numbers are indivisible (except by 1 and themselves), and because all other numbers can be written as multiples of them, they are often regarded as the “atoms” of the math world. Despite their importance, the distribution of prime numbers among the integers is still a mystery. There is no pattern dictating which […]

A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number theory. If Shinichi Mochizuki’s 500-page proof stands up to scrutiny, mathematicians say it will represent one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of […]

Which lead to a post on Square Numbers. These are numbers which are the squares of 2,3,4,5, etc. Therefore, the set of square numbers will be; 4,9,16,25,36, etc. Which can lead to some interesting discoveries… Click the pic above to investigate this idea and click here for more number ideas and links from this excellent maths […]