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Jonathan Payne

@drpmaths.bsky.social
171 followers 293 following 59 posts

Maths teacher* now working on United Learning’s @ulmathsexcellence.bsky.social programme. I made some question generators and other tools in the past (mostly superseded by others’ better things): www.questiongenerator.co.uk

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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
They are the same number (but obv not both acceptable answers!). ‘Being rounded’ isn’t a property that any types of numbers have. The reason that ‘4.0’ isn’t an acceptable answer isn’t because it’s somehow a different number - it’s because in some contexts it implies an interval instead
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
(Although I’d maintain they’re right that they are the same number, but wrong to think that implies they’re interchangeable as answers.)
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
I suspect there’s some context I’m missing though
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
In what way? Assuming those expressions are referring to numbers, they’re the same number.
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Sounds like they're right though?
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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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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Going to be even more of a maths pedant to say that whether it’s impossible entirely depends on what it’s 100% *of*.
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
Something of the form a+bi where a and b are complex, of course
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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 thereofA snail and a golden spiral. Again - nothing matches...
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Yes - but only looked at it briefly a while ago. Will have another look
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Yes - it's very consciously two straight lines plus a circle, based on Aristotelian ideas of physics. The first straight line is 'violent motion', then then vertical straight line is 'natural motion'. I think he goes into some specifics about the geometry of the circular arc which joins the two
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
For now just in the background. But hopefully we can share some stuff soon - I'll let you know
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
between angle and range of cannon, including at 45°. We are including some more 16th century diagrams which include these though
A drawing of a cannon angled upwards at 45°. The angle is measured using a quadrant - a device with a plumb bob and angle markings
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
We're working with Carlisle Castle - initially because of the location of schools I'm working with rather than anything specific about the castle. The mortar at Goodrich looks really interesting! They don't have any mortars like that at Carlisle, but one thing planned is thinking about the link
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Which also allowed me to go to a great nerdy rabbithole about 16th century maths of cannon
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I've been doing some work with English Heritage to develop some maths trips at castles (well - one castle so far). First pilot going on Monday, which I'm really excited about.
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
(Image is from Tartaglia in 16th Century)
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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 · 31/03/2026
Second is using drained weight
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
‘Do the reverse’ has a wide range of applications . E.g expand after factorising and vice versa. If you’ve split into a ratio, find the ratio from your parts etc.
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
We’re going on an adventure…
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
An interesting article on the history of road crossings (including this point) here: joemoran.net/academic-art... I thought it was interesting that ‘jay walking’ was used occasionally in the uk going back a fair bit
joemoran.net
Crossing the Road in Britain, 1931-1976
‘If you need a real bodice-ripper, try Joe Moran’s “Crossing the Road in Britain, 1931-1976”. The paper illustrates how much of our attitude towards pedestrian and traffic controls, that zool…
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Reposted by Jonathan Payne
The Great Pumpkin Papers 🎃🎃🎃 @professormusgrave.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Kids love Philip Glass youtu.be/4JWwOzEDGss?...
youtu.be
Philip Glass - Sesame Street - Geometry of Circles.mp4
YouTube video by SamCam2011
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
One thing that makes this difficult is the huge range it how AI might be used to code. Very reasonable to label a project that’s entirely vibe-coded as made with AI. Less so if someone’s just using copilot to autocomplete short snippets/lines of code they would’ve typed themselves anyway
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
Teach, check, practice. (Which is pretty much the same structure as I-we-you)
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
Making things easier to retrieve and better organised in long term memory
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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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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Why do I not believe you?
A screen shot from a LLM chat, reading 'Got it—I’ll avoid using em-dashes in all future responses' (using and em-dash)
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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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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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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
I think if you’re not too picky about what counts as showing something, then there’s very little that can’t be given some kind of an explanation. I think some volume formulae might be the only things
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 11/10/2025
Depends on how picky you want to be with what counts as showing something is true. You can pretty much always go deeper on the why, in which case it might never be the case (e.g measure theory before area/volume, peano axioms before adding etc)
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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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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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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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Mark Ferguson MP @markfergusonmp.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
This is my flag.
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
This is a terrifying sentence
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
And overall difficulty is of course definitely above what would ever be expected at GCSE
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
I think calling it 'just-about GCSE level' was a bit too much of a stretch! Thought was that something like 'prove that the square of an odd number is one more than a multiple of 4' doesn't require any mod arithmetic heavy-lifting.
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Jonathan Payne @drpmaths.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
The most surprising thing doing this was what the product of the gradients of the tangents is in terms of a, b and c
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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
It's from the textbook for Edexcel's new L2 Extended Maths Certificate
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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 · 10/06/2025
Thanks
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