Rob Eastaway is an English author. He is active in the popularisation of mathematics and was awarded the Zeeman medal [1] in 2017 for excellence in the promotion of maths. He is best known for his books, including the bestselling Why Do Buses Come in Threes? and Maths for Mums and Dads. His first book was What is a Googly?, an explanation of cricket for Americans and other newcomers to the game.
Eastaway is a keen cricketer and was one of the originators of the International Rankings of Cricketers. [2] He is also a puzzle setter and adviser for New Scientist magazine and he has appeared frequently on BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live.
He is the director of Maths Inspiration, a national programme of maths lectures for teenagers which involves some of the UK’s leading maths speakers. He was president of the UK Mathematical Association for 2007/2008. [3] He is a former pupil of The King's School, Chester, and has a degree in engineering and management science from the University of Cambridge. [2]
Martin Gardner was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literature – especially the writings of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, and G. K. Chesterton. He was also a leading authority on Lewis Carroll. The Annotated Alice, which incorporated the text of Carroll's two Alice books, was his most successful work and sold over a million copies. He had a lifelong interest in magic and illusion and in 1999, MAGIC magazine named him as one of the "100 Most Influential Magicians of the Twentieth Century". He was considered the doyen of American puzzlers. He was a prolific and versatile author, publishing more than 100 books.
Off spin is a type of finger spin bowling in cricket. A bowler who uses this technique is called an off spinner. Off spinners are right-handed spin bowlers who use their fingers to spin the ball. Their normal delivery is an off break, which spins from left to right when the ball bounces on the pitch. For a right-handed batsman, this is from his off side to the leg side. The ball breaks away from the off side, hence the name 'off break'.
Recreational mathematics is mathematics carried out for recreation (entertainment) rather than as a strictly research- and application-based professional activity or as a part of a student's formal education. Although it is not necessarily limited to being an endeavor for amateurs, many topics in this field require no knowledge of advanced mathematics. Recreational mathematics involves mathematical puzzles and games, often appealing to children and untrained adults and inspiring their further study of the subject.
Sir Erik Christopher Zeeman FRS, was a British mathematician, known for his work in geometric topology and singularity theory.
David Breyer Singmaster was an American-British mathematician who was emeritus professor of mathematics at London South Bank University, England. He had a huge personal collection of mechanical puzzles and books of brain teasers. He was most famous for being an early adopter and enthusiastic promoter of the Rubik's Cube. His Notes on Rubik's "Magic Cube" which he began compiling in 1979 provided the first mathematical analysis of the Cube as well as providing one of the first published solutions. The book contained his cube notation which allowed the recording of Rubik's Cube moves, and which quickly became the standard.
Puzzle Panel was a light-hearted, though cerebral BBC Radio 4 panel game that was broadcast between 1998 and 2005. An additional series was broadcast over the winter-spring of 2011, and a further series was broadcast during the same period in 2012. It has been written and presented by puzzle columnist for The Guardian, Chris Maslanka.
Klotski is a sliding block puzzle thought to have originated in the early 20th century. The name may refer to a specific layout of ten blocks, or in a more global sense to refer to a whole group of similar sliding-block puzzles where the aim is to move a specific block to some predefined location.
Murderous Maths is a series of British educational books by author Kjartan Poskitt. Most of the books in the series are illustrated by illustrator Philip Reeve, with the exception of "The Secret Life of Codes", which is illustrated by Ian Baker, "Awesome Arithmetricks" illustrated by Daniel Postgate and Rob Davis, and "The Murderous Maths of Everything", also illustrated by Rob Davis.
The Mathematical Association is a professional society concerned with mathematics education in the UK.
Desmond MacHale is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at University College Cork, Ireland. He is an author and speaker on several subjects, including George Boole, lateral thinking puzzles, and humour. He has published over 80 books, some of which have been translated into languages including Danish, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, German, Korean, and Japanese.
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy is a British mathematician, Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford and author of popular mathematics and popular science books. He was previously a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, Wadham College, Oxford and served as president of the Mathematical Association, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) senior media fellow, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow.
The grid method of multiplication is an introductory approach to multi-digit multiplication calculations that involve numbers larger than ten. Because it is often taught in mathematics education at the level of primary school or elementary school, this algorithm is sometimes called the grammar school method.
Jordan Stuart Ellenberg is an American mathematician who is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research involves arithmetic geometry. He is also an author of both fiction and non-fiction writing.
Jeremy John Gray is an English mathematician primarily interested in the history of mathematics.
In mathematics education at the primary school level, chunking is an elementary approach for solving simple division questions by repeated subtraction. It is also known as the hangman method with the addition of a line separating the divisor, dividend, and partial quotients. It has a counterpart in the grid method for multiplication as well.
Tony Gardiner is a British mathematician who until 2012 held the position of Reader in Mathematics and Mathematics Education at the University of Birmingham. He was responsible for the foundation of the United Kingdom Mathematics Trust in 1996, one of the UK's largest mathematics enrichment programs, initiating the Intermediate and Junior Mathematical Challenges, creating the Problem Solving Journal for secondary school students and organising numerous masterclasses, summer schools and educational conferences. Gardiner has contributed to many educational articles and internationally circulated educational pamphlets. As well as his involvement with mathematics education, Gardiner has also made contributions to the areas of infinite groups, finite groups, graph theory, and algebraic combinatorics.
Millie Inbetween is a British children's sitcom series broadcast on CBBC and starring Millie Innes. The first episode premiered on 1 October 2014, with the final episode airing on 12 December 2018. It focuses on 12-year-old Millie and her 15-year-old sister whose parents have recently split up. In August 2019, Richard Wisker confirmed that he, Tallulah Greive and Theo Stevenson would reprise their roles from Millie Inbetween in an iPlayer sitcom Flatmates, aimed at an older audience.
Matthew Thomas Parker is an Australian recreational mathematician, author, comedian, YouTube personality and science communicator based in the United Kingdom. His book Humble Pi was the first maths book in the UK to be a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller. Parker was the Public Engagement in Mathematics Fellow at Queen Mary University of London. He is a former maths teacher and has helped popularise maths via his tours and videos.
Hannah Fry is a British mathematician, author, and radio and television presenter. She is Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. She studies the patterns of human behaviour, such as interpersonal relationships and dating, and how mathematics can apply to them. Fry delivered the 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.
Maths Week Ireland (MWI) is an all-island mathematics outreach initiative founded in 2006 by Eoin Gill and Sheila Donegan, based on an idea by Eoin Gill. It is a project of the Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology (CALMAST) the STEM outreach centre at Waterford Institute of Technology. It is run by Gill and Donegan who are the directors of CALMAST. In 2019 MWI engaged over 400,000 people on an island with a population of under 7 million and is arguably the world's largest mathematics festival.