Resources

Bar codes have a pattern in their digits to help detect errors. A magic trick can be done where one person reads out all but the final digit on the bar code of a product, and the second person ‘predicts’ this final digit (the check digit) by using the pattern in the digits. Teach your class to do this trick and get them thinking about the maths that makes the trick work.

In this video below Matt Parker and Steve Mould manage to create recursive fractals using Powerpoint. Here we've collected some ideas for making giant fractals with your class. Including a brand new guide for a low-prep paper Sierpinski triangle the whole class can help build.

In the video below, Matt Parker and James Grime get us thinking about the sorts of numbers that can be expressed as the difference of two squares. Use the video and our task ideas to get your students playing around with squares and constructing proofs.

Can you arrange five consecutive odd numbers in a line, so that the differences between adjacent pairs of numbers are all different? What if the numbers are connected in a way other than in a line?

The Graceful Tree Conjecture in graph theory says that we will always be able to arrange n evenly-spaced numbers in a tree (with n nodes) so that differences between adjacent pairs are all different. Explore this with your students!

Chinese New Year in 2019 (5 February) welcomes in the year of the Earth-Pig. In Chinese Mythology, each year has a Zodiac which comprises of an animal and an element. When will the next Earth-Pig year be? What was the Chinese Zodiac of the year of your birth? Celebrate Chinese New Year by using maths to answer these questions.

Which week day will your birthday be this year? Or in 2020? When will you next be able to re-use your 2019 calendar? This set of tasks is about the maths of calendars, and is inspired by Matt Parker's video 'How many calendars are there?'

This set of resources is all about the song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. Work out your own Christmas Price Index (the cost of all the gifts in the song) as calculated by the PNC every year, create a formula for how many gifts are received in the song by the nth day and even make an extra festive Christmas Price Index chart.

Think Maths team members Matt and Katie have created a maths project that will take place from October 2018 - they've made a 2m tall cylinder out of mirror steel, and will be using it to create anamorphic images. Anamorphic images have been distorted, so that they only look correct when viewed from one exact position.

Have you met the Utilities Puzzle? A puzzle that cannot be solved on flat surface but can be solved on the surface of a mug! Introduce your students to this puzzle and other areas of graph theory with this set of resources.

Across the world pets are making predictions about the outcome of World Cup 2018 games with Matt Parker's Psychic Pets project (video below). You can join in and register your pet!

These worksheets help explore the maths behind the Psychic Pets project. Curriculum topics covered include probability and combinations and permutations.