Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Calendar of Mathsy Moments

The calendar of mathsy 'moments' (downloads provided below) is a calendar marking at least one mathsy 'moment' (or event) of interest for each day from 1 August 2018 to 31 December 2019.  It is primarily intended for schools and teachers to use in gentle cultivation of a respectful yet intellectually playful approach to mathematics in their students, in support moreover of the development of students' deeper and perhaps wider appreciation and framing of mathematics in the historical, cultural and intellectual sense.

The calendar is shared to help teachers establish and cultivate an ethos of mathematics as progress in the classroom, to help teachers in other words help their students develop and sustain happy and fulfilling relationships with their mathematics, encouraging the desire to explore further, deeper, and more independently — fuelling students' curiosity and their capacity for such.  It is hoped that in sharing these brief moments of mathematics with students, in unabashedly celebrating the joy that is to be found in mathematics, teachers will fulfil their roles as enthusiasts, advocates and celebrators of mathematics, both as an intellectual discipline and cultural artefact, and students will in turn stand a greater chance that the subject will inspire — rather than beguile — them.

The calendar is provided below for access from this page.  Downloads in a range of formats are also provided for easy import.  Each 'moment' is outlined in more detail within the description / notes section of each calendar entry, which may serve as a prompt for the teacher with respect to how s/he may use / share it, if at all.  Where applicable, links to sources, and other sources of information — including online articles, historical artefacts, videos, podcasts, etc. — are provided within each description as a start for further exploration, as desired.

The moments are categorised within the calendar as follows:
  • Moments / Events occurring at various times throughout the year (note that a 'Day' relates to the day of the year, e.g. 14 March 2019 is the 73rd day of the year, and so a curio about 73 may be given.  A 'Date' relates to the date as a concatenated number, in dd/mm/yyyy format unless otherise indicated, e.g. 14 March 2019, the 14th day of the 3rd month in the 2019th year, 14/3/2019, which concatenates to 1432019).  These moments include:
    • Prime Number Dates, Mathematicians' Birthdays, Historical Dates to note in Mathematics, Circular Prime Number Dates, Emirp Dates, Frustrating Prime Number Dates, Days for Curious Calculations, Days for Number Facts, Palindromic Number Dates, Palindromic Prime Number Days, Pi Dates, et al.
    • The 'Day for a Number Fact' days aims to feed our natural love of numbers (or perhaps revitalise it), exposing students to — or maybe tantalising them with — a wide range of more exotic sounding mathematics from number theory that they may not ordinarily come across in their day to day curriculum.  For example, in sharing such moments students will know of: good primes, home primes, long primes, Sophie Germain primes, Ramanujan primes, Fibonacci primes, near-repdigit primes, quadruprimes, prime triplets, prime sums, primes that remain prime when added to their reverse, circular primes, emirps, permutable primes, near primorial primes, palindromic primes, dihedral primes, twin primes, sexy primes, numbers commonly assumed incorrectly to be prime, semiprimes, sphenic numbers, other prime products, unprimeable numbers, happy numbers, sad numbers, distinctly happy numbers, perfect numbers, superperfect numbers, pseudoperfect numbers, weird numbers, abundant numbers, deficient numbers, almost integers, duck-duck-goose numbers, Mersenne numbers, lucky numbers, amicable numbers, polite numbers, sociable numbers, automorphic numbers, narcissistic numbers, odious numbers, pernicious numbers, evil numbers, practical numbers, arithmetic numbers, polygonal numbers, undulating numbers, telephone numbers, antisigma numbers, highly composite numbers (or anti-primes), refactorable numbers, taxicab numbers, tetranacci numbers, vampire numbers, untouchable numbers, Bell numbers, Euclid numbers, Franel numbers, Frobenius numbers, mountain numbers, star numbers, Smith / Joke numbers, Friedman numbers, the divisor (factor) function, the partition function, Jacobi's formula, Aronson's sequence, Fibonacci factorials, Euler's 6n+1 theorem, repdigits, primorials, subfactorials, double factorials, superfactorials, hyperfactorials, trees, Golomb's sequence, numbers in different bases, etc.
  • Moments / Events occurring once in the year (including some national or globally recognised awareness days with particular reference to mathematics).  These moments include:
    • A Perfect Day, An Anti-Perfectt Day, Ada Lovelace Day, e day (Europe and US), Fibonacci Day (US), Half Year Day, Halloween (Vampire Numbers), Mathematics and Statistics Awareness month, McNugget Numbers Day, National Numeracy Day, Phi Day, Phi Day (US), Pi Approximation Day, Pi Day, Root-2 Date, Spreadsheet Day, The Golden Ratio Moment, The Oddest Prime Day, et al.
    • Other Moments / Events not directly related to mathematics (that schools / teachers may nonetheless wish to mark, either because of the mathematics latent within them, or for other more school-centred reasons around values, community and relationships).  These moments include: 
      • Ask A Stupid Question Day, Autumnal Equinox, Black History Month, Book Lovers' Day, European Day of Languages, International Joke Day, International Women's Day, Make Up Your Own Holiday Day, National Coding week, National Poetry Day, National Read a Book Day, National School Nurse Day, National Teaching Assistant's Day, Origami Day, Random Act of Kindness Day, Roald Dahl Day, Space Day, Summer Solstice, Vernal Equinox, Winter Solstice, World Book Day, World Kindness Day, World Music Day, World Teachers' Day.
    Mathsy Moments calendar
    (Click here to go back to the top)
    There are and will be, of course, many other 'moments' that could and maybe should be included in such a calendar.  I make no claim that the calendar offers anything comprehensive.  If there are other 'moments' that you think other teachers may enjoy sharing with students, please let me know in the comments and I will update in subsequent versions.  Equally, whilst every effort has been taken to eliminate errors, if users notice any error in the content of the calendar, I would be very grateful if you could again let me know in the comments.
    GCSE Maths 2019 Countdown calendar
    (Click here to go back to the top)
    This calendar gives a daily countdown to GCSE mathematics exams, both in terms of days left and school days left.  It is intended as a support for teachers to help students (and their families) manage their own study time.





    Further sources
    Sources of information (or explanation), where applicable, have been provided in link form in the description of each moment / event.  If you wish to play further, explore the following sites:


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