iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 16h

Hah, ridiculous, he was just over excited. It's definitely very entertaining though, and I really hope he survives for a while, I love him!

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Reposted by Peter Williams

Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 17h

"I've declared myself a traitor by mistake!"

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 17h

Everyone needs more Richard E Grant in their lives. #traitors #celebritytraitors

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If it helps, you can directly link to that comment so people don't have to scroll down: fifteensquared.net/2026/09/21/i...

fifteensquared.net

Independent Cryptic Crossword – the future – Fifteensquared

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Of course people who*really* like music aren't likely to listen to AI generated stuff, but an awful lot of people do use music as background noise whilst they're getting on with life. Those people really don't care how the music was made, just whether or not it performs its duty as a soundtrack.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is precisely why the online mockery is problematic. You need to listen to the real people who actually do use AI I'm their daily lives and try to understand them. Scoffing because the tech bro is "clueless" when they have actual data to back them up isn't going to halt the progress of AI.

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Tommaths (he/him) @teakayb.mathsy.space · 30/09/2026

Would you be able to put a FREE Japanese language edition of The Mathematicians' Library to good use? I'll send it out to the first person who gives me a good reason why they should have it, and I'll even cover postage (anywhere the UK). 1/n

A Japanese edition of The Mathematicians’ Library lies on a deep magenta patterned carpet. The blue book cover features large white Japanese lettering, the English title The Mathematicians’ Library, and colourful overlapping translucent mathematical shapes forming a vivid abstract design. The author’s name, Thomas K. Briggs, and the publisher’s name appear in Japanese.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I have that same "fantasy", except it's a nightmare because I'm the one observing out of specialty and I have no idea about the subject content.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If you don't think the entire thing is an act of wanton vandalism, I'm not sure we can be friends any more.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

How do you talk through the secret vote calculation? The picture makes sense, but without stressing there I'm struggling to find an intuitive explanation for the calculation.

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Bill Wilkinson @drwilkinsonsci.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Monday's TGT looks at 2008 Crashgate scandal. Was it the greatest scandal in sport? If so how come hardly anyone seems to have paid a price? bit.ly/TutorGroupThink

Monday 28th September
On 28th September 2008 Formula 1 held its first ever night race through the streets of Singapore. But the race is not remembered for the dramatic image of F1 cars racing through floodlit streets, it’s remembered for ‘Crashgate’.
The Renault team were having a disappointing season and qualifying at Singapore was no better. Their best driver, Fernando Alonso qualified 15th and took an early pit stop which appeared fortuitous when his teammate Nelson Piquet Jr crashed into a wall two laps later. The safety car slowed down the field and as they all needed to pit stop, Alonso was able to overtake the whole field and claim an unexpected victory.
It was over a year later that Piquet admitted he’d crashed deliberately under orders of team principal Flavio Briatore. Briatore was handed a lifetime ban from all FIA motorsport, but he challenged this in French courts and his ban was overturned and he returned to F1 in 2013.
Some have called it the worst case of cheating in sporting history given the potential consequences of a high speed crash, putting drivers, spectators and track crews in danger.
What would you do if you were ordered to deliberately crash in order to help your teammate? Would your answer change if you were threatened to be fired from your dream job?
Who carries more responsibility the team principal or the driver?
When should you refuse to follow an instruction from someone in authority?

Monday 28th September
On 28th September 2008 Formula 1 held its first ever night race through the streets of Singapore.
The race is not remembered for this milestone. Instead it is known as the ‘Crashgate’ race when Renault’s Nelson Piquet Jr was ordered to deliberately crash his car at high speed so that his team mate Fernando Alonso could win as all other cars slowed down behind the safety car.
Team principal Flavio Briatore was handed a lifetime ban from all FIA motorsport, but he challenged this in court and his ban was overturned and he returned to F1 in 2013.
Given the dangers, some have called it the worst cheating in sports history.
Who carries more responsibility, the team principal or the driver?
When should you refuse to follow an instruction from someone in authority?

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Right, can't do bowling in those black soles, you'll mark the lanes.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

That isn't to say I think it's easy in any way, or that Ofsted will ever get it "right". But you can't just ignore teaching and learning entirely because it's difficult.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It would be super weird to have hospital inspections only look at administration, compliance and safeguarding, and ignore patient care. In the same way inspections in schools must look at teaching in some way.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ok, great, over half of teachers don't want Ofsted. I get that, but what would you do instead? Schools need accountability, and they're never going to like it, no matter what form it takes.

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Reposted by Peter Williams

Jonathan Hall @studymaths.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

UPDATE: I've just added a pen overlay tool to the Algebra Tiles. It needs a bit of tweaking (rubber tool etc) and once I'm happy I'll roll it out to the rest of the manipulatives. mathsbot.com/manipulative...

A screenshot of the Algebra Tiles tool with the new pen overlay being used. In this case to complete the square.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I'll add that to my repertoire.

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David K Butler @davidkbutler.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I don’t usually engage with things that don’t have alt text, but I am nerdsniped by this one. So I will #TryMathsLive on this problem from @ridermeister.bsky.social: Rationalise the denominator of 1/(√2+√3+√5).

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Good grief, that's an awful lot of schools doing ice breakers as part of their inset. Here's what teachers responded yesterday on teachertapp.co.uk

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

You should only take a shortcut if you know the long way around well enough to know what you've missed, and where you will be picking up the familiar route after the shortcut. Or, if you're just exploring, and then it isn't really a shortcut at all.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I don't have a laptop at work. My home one gets shut down every time I use it, because the boys use it as well so I can't leave any work stuff open.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Not to be confused with woo-hoo.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If those golden hours are the ones before anyone else is around to get in the way, mine are any time before 6am, and let me tell you, those hours are rubbish.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I use an XP-pen Deco LW: www.storexppen.co.uk/buy/deco-lw.... It's very lightweight, and roughly A4 size. The other common brand is Huion, I have one of theirs too and it's also great. Wacom has an equivalent as well, but they are a bit more pricey.

storexppen.co.uk

Deco LW Bluetooth drawing tablet for illustrators | XP-Pen UK official store

The XPPen Deco LW graphics pad is available in four colors, with exquisite, stylish, and simple appearance. X3-smart-chip digital pen offers you more natural creative control than ever before. The b...

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I'm an advocate of the Bluetooth graphics tablet. You can annotate from anywhere in the room, it's great.

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Beth G-G @bethgg.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

NEW on #ArtHistoryEtc 🎨 This morning's reflections. Regional and local museums and galleries are often seen as less worthy than national institutions, but behind the ‘provincial’ label is a wealth of expertise, knowledge and connection to place. arthistoryetc.co.uk/the-power-of...

arthistoryetc.co.uk

The Power of Provincial Art – Art History Etc

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Ben Newmark @bennewmark.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Stop Making Them Copy. My latest blog post for @knowledge-hub.bsky.social Why asking pupils to copy is almost always a bad bet and what I do instead. theknowledgehubuk.substack.com/p/stop-makin...

Screenshot of text from the linked blog post.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I love it, in maths I do a similar thing. Split the board in half, go through a question on the left hand side myself, narrating as I go along. Then put a different, but similar question on the right. That's the one they do in their books. No copying.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

9x 60 minute lessons per fortnight. Grade 7, but we will accept grade 6 on the condition that you start four subjects and drop one by October, which might be a forced decision if you aren't coping. We've done a couple of assessments by that point to help make the call.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I've also done debates in threes where the extra person is a moderator, ensuring people are actually listening and responding to each other instead of just running through their own talking points. How do you normally structure paired talk?

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Depends very much on how you're organising the paired talk. If it's tightly organised A/B take turns with a fixed tone for each speaker, then your could just have them be A/B/C and give them slightly less time each.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

That does seem substantially outside of the "marking English is subjective" window.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Which it is, that's part of the reason these shifts are happening at all. It's even there in the article. But those considerations will always be secondary to childcare issues whilst the approach to change is piecemeal.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

To be fair, whilst it's only a handful of schools changing things, that is the debate. There are clear childcare options in the longer summer break, but not in the half terms. It's naive to think these debates are purely about the best way to educate children.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Have you ever tried a graphics tablet for writing? I have a wireless one, so I can hold it in my hands when I write standing up. It took some practice, but it's so much better than being tied to a desk or having to write directly on the board. I can even write from the back of the classroom!

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Then you can make your own choice later about which one to use (and you might find it varied between questions), but only after you know how each different approach works.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I often find myself saying something like "for these questions, I need you to practice this new approach, even if you don't like it as much."

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I don't think you need the compelling case at the start, you just need to show the equivalence. The compelling case can come later, hopefully accompanied by some "oh, now it makes sense" moments.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

It's always a difficult decision to make when you're introducing things. Do I go for the simplistic version, which is easy to follow and execute, but maybe lacks extensibility? It's a tough choice in so many areas of maths, and not one I think about enough.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Whereas if you kicked off with find 13% in a calculator using a multiplier. Then from there built up to find 123% (oh, by the way that's the same thing as increasing by 23%), I think they would default to multipliers. But at the expense of maybe finding the whole thing much more confusing!

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Oh I get the problem, but if you start the topic off with "find 10% of", then build up to "find 40% of", and then eventually later on get to "increase by 40%", it's no wonder they default to what I would call a mental arithmetic approach.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My wife told me how she used excel to randomise her class list for a seating plan by adding a column next to their names with a random number in, and sorting by that column. Excellent #ExcelToday work, couldn't be more proud of her nerdiness!

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Equally, you could just start with horrible numbers that you can't deal with mentally.

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Amanda Austin @draustinmaths.com · 02/09/2026

It's back to school this week for many, so this is your annual reminder about draustinmaths.com. There are now over 1200 free maths resources, including over 100 resources for A-level Maths and Further Maths. And when you've exhausted all of those, there are a few paid-for resources too!

draustinmaths.com

Maths Teaching Resources | Dr Austin Maths

Dr Austin Maths is a free-to-use Maths teaching resources website, focussing on quality resources for KS4 IGCSE and GCSE Maths.

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Peter Williams @mathsimpact.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

You do realise this is a pretty creepy thing to do on a public platform right rob?

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