Big MathsJam

Abstract: In an age of fake news and misinformation, data visualisation has become essential for building bridges between experts and the general public. Creating not only truthful, but also functional, beautiful, and insightful visualisation is an art form. For far too long have we been plagued by, OMG25 Keynote talk: Information Is Beautiful by Dr Christoph Bartneck

Did you know we also have a MathsJam annual gathering in Oceania? The Oceania MathsJam Gathering (OMG) has shared this video of their 2025 public keynote talk, a fun talk on charts and data visualisation from Dr. Christoph Bartneck of Canterbury University, NZ:

Attendees of this year's Big MathsJam UK Gathering should now have had a post-event email with links to session recordings and some follow-up info. We hope you all had a lovely time, and make sure you're on our mailing list to get the details for 2026! mathsj.am/ukg-mailin...

Arrived at #MathsJam on Friday to find my front door key tangled up in my keyring. Many mathematicians (>10) had a go at untangling it. No go.
Stupid o'clock Sunday morning, heading to check out as I had to miss the final day, I pull my keys from my back pocket. All untangled. #MathsJam trolling me.

I wanted to make a poster about this for the new Big #MathsJam feature, but I don't have a printer, so:

Carnival of Mathematics The Carnival of Mathematics is a monthly blogging round up hosted by a different blog each month. The Aperiodical will be taking responsibility for organising a host each month, and links to the mo…

Also of potential interest to Big #MathsJam folk & other maths fans: don't forget to submit recent maths stuff ready for December's Carnival of Mathematics: aperiodical.com/carnival-of-...

Superman IV film recreated in Milton Keynes 30 years on - BBC News An artist recreates 10 minutes of the 1986 film Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, where it was originally shot in Milton Keynes.

Big #MathsJam -ers who took the train home today and are also movie fans might have recognised the railway station building from 1987's Superman IV.

Various other buildings in CMK were used as locations for bits of Metropolis in the movie.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...

Martin Whitworth says passports are size A6.5 #mathsjam

The real winner of my #mathsjam competition is me, who got all these incredible frog pictures!

Fabulous weekend at Big #Mathsjam, sorry to have to leave before the end. I love the little bubble of maths joy I get to be part of.

@bigmathsjam.bsky.social is officially over! Many thanks to everyone who organised, contributed to it, maintained the Gather town remote space etc. #mathsjam #remoters 👏👏👏

Lovely weekend at #mathsJam . Thanks to all those who organised and those who gave talks. Hope to see you all next year! Safe journey home everyone.

Another excellent Big #MathsJam. Somehow I'm less tired than usual. Maybe it's the travel that does it‽

Had a lovely weekend at @bigmathsjam.bsky.social getting lots of mathsy inspiration from all the best people, but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't also glad to be going home to destimulate!! Thanks so much to Colin Katie, Scroggs and everyone else who helped for a brilliant time! #Mathsjam

And we're all done with the MathsJam UK Gathering for 2025! Thanks to everyone who came along and joined us - in-person or online - and who gave talks, volunteered to help or brought along interesting maths to share! Hope to see you all again next time!

Finally, to wrap up MathsJam for this year, Colin Wright got us thinking about compass and straight-edge constructions of a regular pentagon, and how we know such a construction is exact.

Cat, Dog, and Mouse Magic Can you fill each grid with red and yellow tokens?

For the penultimate talk of MathsJam, Nancy Blachman shared a mathematical magic trick that can be accomplished in multiple ways.
See more at

Raphael Colman talked to us about creating knitting stitch diagrams using Haskell. How can you average colours to make a pixellated image look good knitted?

Next, Barney Maunder-Taylor shared what happens when you glue a square based pyramid and a triangular based pyramid together. Can you prove that the volume of the square-based pyramid is twice that of the triangular?

To start the final set of talks at #mathsjam, Vanessa Madu sharred her explorations of sequences of consecutive odd semiprimes. You can read her blog post about it here:

And the winner of best circumvention of the rules was Guveer's small box: mathsjam.com/gatheri...

Highlights of the competitions included prizes of one eighth of an issue of New Scientist, and a bar of chocolate wrapped in the full worked solution to the puzzle. Dave's poly filler competition won best competition and got the most entries: mathsjam.com/gatheri...

And to finish this session, we've announced the winners of the competitions - the bakeoff winners are now listed on the cakes page: mathsjam.com/gatheri...

Ben Handley wrapped up the last session before lunch - he has been exploring skittles, building on previous Mathsjam talks by Clare Wallace, looking at the probability of finding identical packs of skittles. Turns out the distribution of skittles is uniformly independently random!

14th Stellation of the Icosahedron (modular 60) by murkle MakerWorld: Download Free 3D Models Boost MePlease boost for more models like this!You need to print 60 copies of this and superglue 240 magnets (6x3). Seven fit on a plate (P1S) so in that case print 9 plates (or 8-and-a-bit) The three plates have different depth magnet holes. Plate 3 works for the cheap magnets from AliExpress which (in my experience) all seem a little thinner than 3mm See pictures for assembly, make sure the magnets have the correct N/S orientation: each piece has 2 N and 2 Sthe “middle” 2 holes have the same orientation and the “edge” 2 have the opposite to thatglue a few and TEST that they assembly OKI've printed this in Elegoo silver Silk PLAYou can modify the magnet holes here https://www.geogebra.org/classic/n4fahkbc (change eg depth and export as STL)

Next up, Michael Borcherds shared with us his favourite shape - the 14th Stellation of the Icosahedron - and how to 3D print it. Try it yourself:

Circles Cloud Storage - Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

Starting the penultimate session of #mathsjam 2025, Kristin Ohlmann showed us how the digits of pi and tau can be used to improve visibility of her unicycle. And she's actually brought it with her to MathsJam! Here's her Python code:

Why I'm not at Big Maths Jam in person ❤️

Hamish joins the other Mathscots at @bigmathsjam.bsky.social

Finally, Martin Whitworth talked us through the rational reason for irrational paper sizes, and how to exploit the 1 to root 2 aspect ratio when folding paper. Did you know, a sheet of A4 paper weighs the same as a 20p coin?

Ashleigh Ratcliffe told us all about strategies for weighing items where all but one item has identical weight - inspired by a question which features in the Leiden Math Trail www.universiteitleid...