Welcome to our roundup of all things Cambridge Mathematics

A message from our Director

Dear reader

Marhaba,

'Mathematics is the most beautiful and most powerful creation of the human spirit', as Banach once said. It deserves to be lauded for its exquisiteness, its significance and its impact on our daily lives. From thousands of years BCE and its use in daily trade and land surveying, to being the backbone of machine learning and artificial intelligence that everyone is mesmerised by nowadays, mathematics is the gift that keeps on giving. 

There are many things that actually get celebrated in a calendar year when it comes to mathematics: mathematics as a subject, mathematical domains or results, notable mathematicians or groups of mathematicians, and more. There are also many celebration-worthy artefacts that do not have their dedicated day while being acknowledged as remarkable, but it does not make them any less important; worth does not need an observance to be appreciated as much as observance does not necessarily imply worth, which does not apply on this occasion! Let us focus today on the festive part regardless of pros and cons of celebratory events, starting with the International Day of Mathematics (IDM). IDM is one of the most known yearly mathematical celebrations; it occurs on 14 March, written as 3/14 in the North American system of writing dates, highlighting the first three digits of pi (π). The day was chosen due to the importance of pi in mathematics and beyond, to acknowledge how much it is used daily and how much the number is known to the public. An approximation of pi, the fraction 22/7, also gets celebrated on 22 July, which is also an opportunity to hail a great polymath: Archimedes, who is said to have been the first person to use this approximation (although that is debatable). Always in the same spirit, another, probably less known, number that gets celebrated by certain mathematics enthusiasts is tau (τ), which is equal to two times pi (I will let you figure out the day of the celebration!). While many argue that celebrating tau comes back to celebrating pi, Michael Hartl argues in The Tau Manifesto that tau is 'perhaps the most important' number in mathematics; enjoy the article to find out why! 

What about non-multiples of pi? Other special numbers get acknowledged as well; one of them is e, Euler's number, that is celebrated on 7 February or 27 January, depending on where it is being celebrated (try guessing why). e is quite important in mathematics, when dealing with logarithms, exponential growths and decays, and in calculus overall. Luckily, pi and e come together a lot in mathematics, namely in what many consider the most beautiful formula in mathematics: Euler's identity. Another special day on the calendar is 23 November, in which Fibonacci's sequence is honoured; why this date? It is a riddle that I am certain you will easily crack. Phi (Φ) day needs to be mentioned as well, to recognise the golden ratio. Here too, two different days are suggested, and I will again let you figure out which ones and why! But that is not the whole story: there are Ada Lovelace Day; the Sonia Kovalevsky Days; National Mathematics Day in India that commemorates the birth of Srinivasa Ramanujan; National Numeracy Day in the UK; Pythagorean Theorem Day; the Palindrome Days; the Square Root Days; and many more! Some get celebrated on a specific date while others move in the calendar from year to year or even spread over multiple days. Which mathematical day is your favourite? Personally, I see every day as a mathematics day; it is something I use, enjoy and reflect on continuously, and something that I feel honoured to be practising daily in my career. I will leave it here and let you explore all the above and maybe think of more events and additional numbers, topics and people to celebrate.

In this newsletter, I am excited to welcome our newest team member: Jireh (Jai) Dawn Cruz. Jai is based in Manila and will support us with our administrative tasks. We are all happy to have her on board! We also have for you in this issue two episodes of our podcast, Staffroom Catch-Up, where Fran speaks to practitioners about the practical use of research in mathematics education. Additionally, we offer you two blogs: one by Tabs, where she explores isomorphic problems and even gives you a task at the end to work on; and one by Tabs and Fran, where they take you through their contribution to Maths Week England via a special webinar they delivered this past November. I am sure you will appreciate this special issue celebrating mathematics, as our newsletters and all our activities in Cambridge Mathematics do!

So, keep practising, enjoying and appreciating mathematics and its beauty, and do stay in touch with Cambridge Mathematics to learn everything about our work and plans. 

Best wishes,

Share this Sip & Snack