Books That Are About Maths, But Not About Teaching It

In the spirit of getting straight to the point without providing my entire life history, please click below for a list of books that are about maths, but not about teaching it. Read beyond the link if you'd like a bit of context.

Click here to see the list of Books that Are About Maths, But Not About Teaching It

The list has been put together at The StoryGraph^[2]: it can be browsed without creating an account and it can be searched, sorted and filtered, which I thought would be helpful as there are over 160 books.

Peter Briggs: 26/04/1952 - 25/06/2024

My dad, Peter Briggs, died in the early hours of 25th June 2024 and we held his funeral yesterday, 22nd July. some of those who were able to attend have requested a copy of the eulogy and readings, and some of those who unfortunately could not join us in person have expressed an interest in hearing more about them too, so I thought it might be nice to preserve some of what happened at our celebration of Peter Briggs. The number of people who were able to attend was astonishing and he would have been overwhelmed by the gathering of well-wishers who came to say goodbye with us. The number of ex-colleagues alone, considering that he retired five years ago, was testament to the effect he'd had during his 49 years working in the same building.

Dad's favourite treat was chocolate raisins, so I bought three kilograms of them and shared them between nearly one hundred (Moody) blue organza wedding-favour bags to give out to attendees.

Maths in Museums: Museum of London Docklands

Edit: Since posting this, the Museum of London has re-branded itself as London Museum, meaning that the Museum of London Docklands is now London Museum Docklands.

One of the great things about working as a consultant in the heritage sector is that it often takes me to museums, galleries and heritage sites that I might not otherwise have got around to visiting. This time it was the Museum of London Docklands, located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The museum itself is nestled towards the North-West extent of the Isle of Dogs, which is the peninsula delineated by that famous wiggle^[1] in London's section of the Thames. It played host to the West India Docks which first opened in 1802 and closed for business in 1980^[2] to be redeveloped into the area now known as Canary Wharf.

Maths in Museums: Stonehenge

On Saturday morning I crested a hill on the A303 just past Amesbury and my brain yelled something that I imagine a million and more brains, over thousands of years, have yelled before mine:

"What the hell is that!?"

It did this despite having made a special trip to the area to see that which caused the outburst, and it wasn't even the first time it had done so. As old as the pyramids (or thereabouts) and at once out of place yet totally fitting, Stonehenge is a phenomenal thing to see rising out of the Wiltshire countryside - even when you're expecting it.

A photograph of Stonehenge, taken by me, but looking for all the world like a cardboard cutout on a movie set.

I love museums and heritage sites of all shapes, sizes and themes, but Stonehenge has always commanded a particular fascination. I'm neither religious nor spiritual, but visiting always feels like something of a pilgrimage. I work with museums and I'm also a maths communicator, both of which affect the way I look at cultural experiences: this post is intended to document some of the thoughts I had regarding the potential of Stonehenge's story for enriching mathematical understanding (and vice-versa).

Teachers and BIDMAS, BODMAS, PEMDAS, GEMS, etc

Here's one for you:

Do even maths teachers argue about this? by T. Briggs, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

But before we get onto that, have a think about this one:

\[8 \div 2 \times (2 + 2) \]

I've had a post on this subject in mind for (quite literally) years, but it's such a contentious topic I haven't dared to commit it to HTML until I was sure it was ready. The problem is that with anything involving mathematics the conversation very quickly descends into complaining about maths teachers and listing what they're doing wrong and what they should be doing right, and how horrible and evil and lazy they all are. So:

Maths teachers are hard-working, knowledgeable gifts to society. This post is not intended in any way to be a criticism of these real-world superheroes. They are an endangered species as it is and I'm sick of seeing ill-informed vitriol directed at them online. Anybody who takes anything in this post and uses it to attack maths teachers hasn't understood it at all. The problems with mathematics in modern Western society are many and varied, and cannot be solved by maths teachers alone. Any proposed solution to these problems that begins with "maths teachers should..." is short-sighted at best.

 Now that's out of the way I can return to my theme.