Reflections on maths, learning and maths learning support, by David K Butler

Tag: exploration

  • Panda Squares

    This post is about a puzzle I’ve been tweeting about for the last couple of days. I got it originally from a book I was given back in the 1980’s called “Ivan Moscovich’s Super Games”. In the book, Ivan calls this puzzle “Bits”, but I don’t think that’s nearly descriptive or cute enough, so I asked my daughter what it should be called and we have come up with the much better name of PANDA SQUARES.

    You can read the rest of this blog post in PDF form here. 

  • David Butler and the Prisoner of Alhazen

    Once upon a time, I did a PhD in projective geometry. It was all about objects called quadrals (a word I made up) – ovals, ovoids, conics, quadrics and their cones – and the lines associated with them – tangents, secants, external lines, generator lines. During the first two years, I did talks about my PhD research, which I could not resist calling “David Butler and the Philosopher’s Cone” and “David Butler and the Chamber of Secants”.

    At that time, my use of JK Rowling’s titles had to stop because there was no suitable mathematical thing to insert into the third title. It’s been ten long years since “David Butler and the Chamber of Secants”, and finally I have found something to use. Hence, welcome to…

    You can read the rest of this blog post in PDF form here.