Maths at the Big Bang Fair: Everywhere and Nowhere

I've just got back from 2026's Big Bang Fair at the NEC in Birmingham, having last attended in 2024. On both occasions my attendance was as a volunteer for an organisation whose name I won't mention here because I want it to be clear that these are my thoughts rather than theirs. This year, I left feeling thoughtful. In contrast, my experience in 2024 left me frustrated enough to decline an invitation to return in 2025. To introduce the source of that frustration, I invite you to play a game of 'spot the difference':

Side-by-side comparison of two Big Bang Fair promotional lanyards, labelled “2024” and “2026” in large purple text. Both feature the same pale blue design with a smiling young woman in a turquoise shirt with oversized white polka dots, looking upwards with an expression of excitement. The main slogan reads “REDEFINE THE FUTURE WITH…”, but the wording beneath has changed: the 2024 version says “Science, Engineering & Technology”, while the 2026 version says “Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths”. Aside from minor layout adjustments and a thumb partly covering the top edge of the 2026 lanyard, the designs are nearly identical. The image highlights a shift from the familiar STEM expansion of “Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths” to the less common ordering used in the earlier version.

Spot the difference: lanyards from The Big Bang Fair 2024 (left) and 2026 (right)

The return of the "M" to Big Bang's branding was encouraging. But after three days at the fair, I came away wondering whether mathematics had really returned in any meaningful sense. Maths was everywhere at the event, yet almost nowhere was it recognised as maths.

Book Review: Dreams of Amarna by Rachel Mary Wright - Craft, Creativity & Archaeology

In this review of Dreams of Amarna by Rachel Mary Wright, I explore how an art-based creative journey intersects with themes of archaeology, textile art, and unexpected mathematical thinking. This post offers both a personal reflection on the book and key takeaways for readers interested in creative process, history, and cultural exploration.

Introducing Dreams of Amarna

Unusually amongst books that get reviewed on this blog, Dreams of Amarna is not a maths book. Of course, it's difficult to see anything as entirely 'not-maths', but this 170-odd page, full-colour, hardback tale of embroidery is about as far outside my usual comfort-zone as it's possible to get.

Book cover titled “Dreams of Amarna: Stitching an Egyptological Adventure” by Rachel Mary Wright. The cover shows a warm, sandy-toned embroidered-style illustration of people working in an archaeological landscape. Small groups of figures, dressed in simple robes, dig, carry tools, and examine finds across gently sloping ground, suggesting an excavation in Egypt. The stitched textures and soft colours give the scene a calm, handmade feel, echoing both archaeology and textile art.

Book cover: Dreams of Amarna, by Rachel Mary Wright

Goodbye 2025...

We are, I am reliably informed, near to that arbitrary point in our planet's orbit at which much of humanity habitually mark the end of one and the beginning of another. I'm usually neither sentimental nor self-obsessed enough to write something to mark the occasion with a blog post, but looking back on the last eleven months and thirty days I'm struggling more than usual to convince myself that nothing much has happened. Aside from being one internal organ down on the complement I started 2025 with fifty-two-and-seven-fiftieths weeks ago^[1], a handful of things happened that I consider (in an entirely self-indulgent sense) to be noteworthy.

A bookstore display of richly illustrated nonfiction books. In the foreground, a large book titled “The Mathematicians' Library: The Books That Unlocked the Power of Numbers” features circular diagrams and Renaissance-style artwork. Beside it are atlases and map-themed books with compass roses and world maps, all arranged neatly on wooden shelves under warm light.

Seeing my own book for sale in the British Library's bookshop was pretty cool.

I might even get away with describing some of them as:

Carnival of Mathematics #246

Hello and welcome to December 2025's Carnival of Mathematics!

We've reached Carnival number $246 = 2 \times 3 \times 41$, and that's special for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that its digits are, in order, the first three terms in one of the first sequences most of us were introduced to; the chicken soup of all integer progressions that is the two times table.

$246$ is also the current best-known upper-bound for the minimum size of gap that exists between an infinite number of pairs of consecutive primes. It's palindromic in (e.g.) bases 5, 9, and 40; it is untouchable (which means that it is not expressible as the sum of the proper factors of any other number); and if you had a bit of string and seven of each of two colours of bead, you could make one of $246$ different necklaces (using every bead).

And in maths history, Indiana House Bill No. $246$ was an 1897 foray into proof by legislation: it proposed to square the circle using a method that, among other things, implied that $ \pi =3.2 $.

You've taken your seats and loaded up on popcorn, so let's get started on the Carnival's...

Maths in Museums: The Geometry of Castle Keeps (and Why Shapes are Important to Architecture)

Castle keeps come in many shapes - circles, squares, rectangles, and other polygons - and these choices were not accidental. In this post, I explore the geometry of castle keeps, how mathematical considerations influenced medieval military architecture, and what you can still see today when visiting historic sites and museums.

I'm no square

I recently took time out for a quick weekend away in South Wales. The itinerary involved, as is only right, castles^[1]. I was struck by the geometric shapes of the keeps - particularly one with a circular cross-section at Tretower castle, and a larger one with a hexagonal base that forms part of Raglan castle.