iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jonathan Payne

United Learning Maths Excellence Programme @ulmathsexcellence.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Love to see this display with work from our enriched curriculum going up in one of our schools

A school display titled 'Enriched Curriculum' with examples of Pascal's triangle and Sierpinski triangles

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

robertfathauer.bsky.social @robertfathauer.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

The website for the 2026 Bridges Conference Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design is now live, featuring the work of more than 150 artists. gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/...

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Why are there so many pictures of 'golden spirals in nature' where it looks like they haven't even *tried* to make the spiral line up! What is even the point they're trying to make?

A sunflower with a completely unrelated Fibonacci spiral lined up on it. The squares have been labelled with what look like areas, but would actually be lengths. For some reason, the diagonal of the rectangle is shown with a dotted line as if that's at all related to what's going on.

A spirally bit of a plant. With a Fibonacci spiral (or golden spiral) on top. The centre of each spiral are aligned, which makes it all the more obvious that the spiral on plant is completely unrelated to golden spirals or any other logarithmic spirals or approximations thereof

A snail and a golden spiral. Again - nothing matches...

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Fascinated by pre-Newtonian theories of projectiles and how so obviously wrong they seem. I always wonder how these paths didn't seem incorrect to people at the time, but then whether I've just internalised the correct picture. Curious what typical 'pre-theoretic' drawings of the path would be

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Watching 2001 space odyssey on Amazon prime. Love the famous jump cut where a monkey throws up the bone then it cuts to an advert - just as Kubrick intended

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

A pawn starts on the top row of a (semi) infinite chess board. It can move either one square down or diagonally down (capturing a piece). Highlighting which squares can be reached an even number of ways gives this rather nice fractal

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Misspelled ‘implementation’ is ‘implantation’ in a rather formal email… oops!

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

The two grey areas can be shown to be equal using some algebra. It seems like there should be a nice geometric argument (e.g. with cutting and rearranging), but I can't find one. Am I missing something obvious?

Two geometric figures. The first is a rectangle ABCD. X is a point on AB and Y is a point on AD such that AX = AY = x cm, AB = y cm, YD = z cm. The triangle XCY is coloured grey. The vertices are not labelled in the diagram but used here for precision. The second figure is a right-angled trapezium. The parallel sides have length z cm and y cm. The perpendicular height is x cm. It is also grey.

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Very pleased with my mathematical broccoli/cauliflower. Just the one out of 8ish plants seemed to work

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

David Didau @didau.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Telling students stuff is sensible. But if you’re *just* telling them, you’re not really teaching. open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

open.substack.com

The “Just Tell Them” Trap

How direct instruction gets mistranslated as 'teacher talk,' lecturing and all sorts of other dull bobbins

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

Tommaths (he/him) @teakayb.mathsy.space · 11/10/2025

During our #MathsConf39 session, Jason and I revealed our new project: The History and Maths in Education Network (historyand.mathsy.space) which aims to facilitate discussion and sharing of resources & ideas amongst folks interested in using history themes to enrich maths education. 🏛️🎓 #MathsToday

historyand.mathsy.space

Home

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

Ed Davey @eddavey.libdems.org.uk · 14/09/2025

I've written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, urging them to join me in condemning Elon Musk's dangerous remarks inciting violence yesterday. As leaders, we must stand together and make clear Musk will face serious consequences for these actions.

Letter from Ed Davey to Keir Starmer condemning Elon Musk for inciting violence and urging unity to defend democracy.

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

Ed Davey @eddavey.libdems.org.uk · 14/09/2025

Elon Musk openly called for violence on our streets yesterday. I hope politicians from all parties come together to condemn his deeply dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric. Britain must stand united against this clear attempt to undermine our democracy.

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

It’s official - “Nigel Farage is right, don’t vote for him” is a demonstrably awful strategy for Labour. Boosts salience of immigration, costs votes on the left, doesn’t persuade any voters on right (why would they accept a crap knock-off when they can have the original?)

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

I know the usual thing is to point out interesting properties of the *current* year, but interesting to note that 2027 (+2029) will be the first twin prime year for 30 years

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Reposted by Jonathan Payne

Mark Ferguson MP @markfergusonmp.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

This is my flag.

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Was playing with generalising a question from the new Edexcel EMC when I cam across this interesting fact. Nice to be able to come up with a question which combines algebraic proof and coordinate geometry. All just-about GCSE level

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Pretty significant misconception to be stating as fact in an official textbook from an exam board

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

'Interesting' understanding of how birthdays work from ChatGPT here...

Text reads: A baby was born in July. What month will it be on their birthday 15 months later?

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

ABCD is an isosceles trapezium and ADEF is a square. Find the size of angle ABF.

An isosceles trapezium ABCE with parallel sides AB=12cm and DC=6cm, and angle DAB=60°. A square ADEF is joined on the the side. Angle FBA is marked as x

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Does quadrilateral ABCD have a pair of perpendicular opposite sides?

A quadrilateral ABCA, with vertices A(0,4), B (0,2), C (2,0) and D (5,0)

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

A neat fact about quadrilaterals I found out about today: If the diagonals are perpendicular and equal length, then the midpoints of the sides form a square

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

What's funny about these four fractions? I guarantee you'll hate it

$Four fractions: 16/64, 19/95, 26/65, 49/98$

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

A combinations/listing question disguised as a ratio question: Given four numbers a,b,c,d such that: - Two of the numbers are in the ratio 1:2 - Two are in the ratio 1:3 - Two are in the ratio 1:4 How many possibilities are there for the ratio a:b:c:d ?

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Been playing with tree fractals. The ratio needed between line lengths to make this line up properly was a pleasant surprise

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

This is an interesting pair of percentage calculations

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

A fun combinatorial question: Given a<b<c<...<h<i, how many ways are there of arranging a-i in a 3x3 grid such that every row and every column is in ascending order?

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

It looks like bluesky’s moved past the phase where every other post was about people leaving twitter. So I’m a bit late to the party in doing a ‘deleted twitter and moved properly to here’ post…

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