GCSE
GCSE (Foundation)GCSE (Higher)
A-level
IB
IB AA (Standard Level)IB AA (Higher Level)
1-1 Tutoring

Explore Real-World Maths

Why no one has ever shuffled a deck of cards the same way twice
Are you breathing Julius Caesar's last breath?

The Monty Hall problem: why you should always switch

Could every human on Earth fit inside Loch Ness?

Longer reads

Deeper dives, for when you have a coffee and twenty minutes to spare.

Why you can't beat the casino (and the maths of trying)

9 min read

Some infinities are bigger than others

11 min read

The birthday paradox breaks the internet

9 min read

The one number that decides whether an outbreak explodes

11 min read

From Newton's cannonball to black holes, in one equation

9 min read

The number that grows your money (and everything else)

13 min read
Astronomically large numbers

Counting things that turn out to be far bigger than they look.

How many combinations does a Rubik's Cube have?

3 min read

Why no one has ever shuffled a deck of cards the same way twice

4 min read

How many possible games of chess are there?

4 min read

How long would a monkey take to type Hamlet?

4 min read

How many times must you fold a piece of paper to reach the Moon?

4 min read

The rice on the chessboard would bury a country

5 min read

Why your family tree is mathematically impossible

4 min read

A million seconds vs a billion seconds

3 min read
Chance, odds and paradoxes

Where intuition reliably gets probability wrong.

Why 23 people is enough for a shared birthday

4 min read

The Monty Hall problem: why you should always switch

4 min read

Why your friends have more friends than you

4 min read

The roulette wheel has no memory

4 min read

The dice that beat each other in a circle

5 min read

Is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 a bad lottery ticket?

4 min read

Why the house always wins: the maths of roulette

4 min read
How numbers mislead you

Statistics that are true, and conclusions that are not.

Your positive test result probably isn't what you think

5 min read

The treatment that works for men, works for women, and fails for people

5 min read

The planes that came back

5 min read

Benford's law: why the taxman knows when your numbers are fake

4 min read

800 people guessed an ox's weight. The average was almost perfect.

6 min read

The golden ratio is mostly a lie

5 min read
Measuring the Earth

What you can work out about the planet with a stick and some trigonometry.

How a stick measured the Earth 2,200 years ago

4 min read

How do you weigh a planet?

4 min read

How far away is the horizon?

3 min read

How fast are you moving while sitting still?

3 min read

How long is Britain's coastline? It depends who's asking.

5 min read
Out in space

Deriving the numbers behind the Sun, the Moon and the universe itself.

Does the sun really transmit our annual energy needs in 1 hour?

3 min read

Deriving the age of the universe

4 min read

How far is the Moon? Check it with a coin.

4 min read

Why every rocket needs 11 km/s

4 min read
Back-of-the-envelope

Silly questions, taken entirely seriously.

Could every human on Earth fit inside Loch Ness?

3 min read

How much does a cloud weigh?

4 min read

Are there more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way?

4 min read

Are you breathing Julius Caesar's last breath?

4 min read

One 18-inch pizza beats two 12-inch pizzas

4 min read

The maths trick that fixes a wobbly table

5 min read

Could you really dig a hole to Australia?

4 min read

How much would the Death Star cost?

4 min read
Beautiful results

Pure maths that is worth knowing for its own sake.

Estimating π by dropping needles on the floor

4 min read

Why do honeybees build hexagons?

4 min read

0.999… is exactly 1

4 min read

Achilles, the tortoise, and the sum that stops the argument

5 min read

Euclid's 2,300-year-old proof that primes never run out

5 min read

The simplest maths problem no one can solve

5 min read

Every four-digit number falls into the same black hole

5 min read
Puzzles that built maths

Idle questions that accidentally founded entire fields.

The walk that founded a branch of maths

5 min read

Four colours are always enough

6 min read

Six handshakes to anyone on Earth

5 min read

The 37% rule for hiring (and dating)

5 min read

Two Londoners have exactly the same number of hairs

4 min read
Hiding in plain sight

The maths built into clocks, calendars, paper and insects.

How many times a day do clock hands overlap?

5 min read

Why 1900 wasn't a leap year

5 min read

Why A4 paper has an irrational secret

5 min read

The insect that can count prime numbers

6 min read
← Back to Home