April 2008

This month, I present one of my favourite mathematical jottings,
first published in 1993 by The Mathematical Association
in their magazine "Mathematics in Schools".
It was my answer to the question, "What is geometry?".

 Click on the image to read my article

March 2008 

Now available: CD-ROM, readable on all computers, of my art.

A few (low resolution) samples of what is on the CD :

  Click on any image for an enlargement

Cheques payable to
Martin Hansen, Shrewsbury School, Shrewsbury SY3 7BA.
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February 2008

For Helen ....

Mathematical love on Valentine's day, 2008.

January 2008

A new RISC OS desktop application called 'WordChain II' is now available.
The software is an implimentation of Lewis Carroll's classic Doublet puzzle and
is illustrated and described in an article published on the drobe NEWS website.

You can read the article by clicking on the link below.

The software is available (for free) from the 'Software' part of this website.
Happy new year !

August 2007

I've been working with Anthony Haines on a Prime Number Generator for RISC OS. Anthony writes the ARM machine code and I check the output. I then add routines to write the results in a plain text format and wrap the project up in a user friendly WIMP front end. Our first offering, !MakePrime, is now available from this website. The software is free to download but the copyright remains with Anthony and myself.

There will be a MakePrime version II along in a few months. This is currently under test. On Iyonix, MakePrime II has managed to generate 100 million primes using an array of around 128 megabytes. This is twenty times more primes than the maximum available from the current version. It generates these in less than 6 minutes. ( Which I find impressive  ! )

The current !MakePrime download is designed to run on a StrongARM RiscPC with over 32MB of RAM. It will run (twice as fast) on the A9, Iyonix and under VirtualAcorn emulation on Windows and Apple machines.
There is more information about prime numbers (from January 2007) further down this page.

The program requires a directory called "Primes" be placed next to it (as in the Zip archive) and it will place the files written, one for each million primes, into this.

June 2007

The joint winners of The Powell Mathematics Prize 2007 are:

A Angpanitcharoen
D A Kell

The five puzzles from the competition and their solutions are all now posted and available via mouse clicks on the relevant letters below.

March 2007

I'm thrilled to have been given copies of the Mathematical Gazette dating back to 1938. The first thirty years worth of my aquisition belonged to the late Hugh Launchbury, and those since 1968 to Jack Davies. Both men taught mathematics in Cheltenham.

January 2007

I find prime numbers totally mesmerising.
This year's RI Christmas lectures got me thinking about them with a passion I've not had for years. I found that I didn't have the database of primes I needed to test various ideas I last looked at years ago. So this month I've been sorting that out. You can read about this in my drobe article linked to from below.

  Site built and maintained by Martin H Hansen, Shrewsbury School, Shrewsbury. SY3 7BA.
All images, text and file downloads (c) 2006 , 2007 and 2008 by The MathMagical Software Company.