01202 398938

# House of Maths School Workshops Primary & Secondary in Dorset & South - DOGARITHMS

### WHAT’S THE POINT OF LOGARITHMS?

On meeting this adorable litter of ten Dalmation Puppies the other day, I quickly spotted (ahem) the need for Dogarithms – the canine equivalent of logarithms. The conversation with dog breeder Maxine went something like this:

# House of Maths School Workshops Primary & Secondary in Dorset & South - HOW MOST PEOPLE CAN BE “BETTER THAN AVERAGE”!

### JANE: “I did better than average, but then so did most of the class”

Jane’s statement seem ridiculous – how can most people be better than average?  Using some mathematical trickery, here’s how she could be logically correct.

# House of Maths School Workshops Primary & Secondary in Dorset & South - SUPERSTARS OF MATHS – JOHN VENN

### John Venn did not invent the Venn Diagram (the original idea was Euler’s). But he is famous for popularising the diagram which now takes his name. Mathematicians are always looking for ways to make abstract ideas easier to picture – like the Number Line for “picturing” numbers, or the Bar Chart for picturing data. Venn Diagrams are a beautiful way to organise groups, or “sets” of objects.

A FUN EXAMPLE: suppose we want to sort these items into “things with exactly four legs” (Set A), and “the rest” (not in Set A):

John Venn, zebra, cat, octopus, tripod, chair.

One way to do this would be to split them into two lists, but a far prettier way is to arrange them into a Venn Diagram with one circle:

# House of Maths School Workshops Primary & Secondary in Dorset & South - SUPERSTARS OF MATHS – RENE DESCARTES

### This handsome chap is Frenchman Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who famously said “I think therefore I am”.

If you’re thinking about what he might mean by this, then it apparently means you exist – great news and congratulations!!

But the reason Descartes is my “hero of maths” for this month is because he also gives his name to CARTESIAN GEOMETRY – which is what you do when you plot the point (4,3) on a graph by going “along the corridor and up the stairs”. By the way, “Geometry” is a posh word for “Shapes”.