Mathematical Objects

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a piece of folklore. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics and communicating mathematics inspired by a ‘Certified Mathematical Object’ sticker. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Chris Nho from Public-Math.org.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a taxicab. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Venn diagram. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Keisha Thompson.

Katie mentioned the MathForEquality badges and pins.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a slice of pizza. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a light pattern in a tea cup. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Dominika Vasilkova.

Cardioids in coffee cups – Chalkdust

Cardioids in Coffee Cups – Numberphile

‘Stringuart’ String Art website (and less commercial String Art Generator)

A conversation about mathematics, history, games and more, inspired by a Roman dodecahedron. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a 3D wooden puzzle. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Grant Sanderson.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Game of Logic. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by … an object. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Tai-Danae Bradley.

Katie mentions Peter’s The unplanned impact of mathematics, free to read at Nature.

A conversation about infinity inspired by The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a very special parallelepiped. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Ayliean.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by an area the size of Wales. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about election mathematics inspired by a ballot. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Sam Hansen.

For more from Sam and the Carry the Two podcast check out this episode about Mathematics and Voting.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a space-filling curve. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a low bridge sign. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Adam Townsend.

The plot discussed around 11 minutes and various other photos are available on Adam’s Height Hunt website (spoilers for the episode’s twists and turns!).

A short update from Katie and Peter.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by an old textbook, Mathematics in Theory and Practice, edited by Warwick Sawyer. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a scone. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Sophie Maclean.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the Joukowsky aerofoil. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a guitar. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Sam Hartburn.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a 1960s game designed to teach set theory. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

On-Sets: A Vintage Set Theory Game by Peter Rowlett is free to read in Math Horizons.

A conversation about mathematics and literature inspired by a book. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett with special guest Sarah Hart, author of Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Battenberg cake. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the new aperiodic monotile. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Chaim Goodman-Strauss.

The paper announcing the discovery is An aperiodic monotile by David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan and Chaim Goodman-Strauss.

Chaim was recording from MoMath in New York, which will be running a creative artwork competition based on the monotile with UKMT. Chaim also mentioned a meeting in Oxford: Hatfest: celebrating the discovery of an Aperiodic Monotile.

Note: This podcast was recorded after the discovery of the ‘hat’ and ‘turtle’ monotiles but before the announcement of the ‘spectre’ monotile. Confused? Don’t worry, we explain in the episode!

A conversation about mathematics inspired by some fingers. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Ben Orlin. Ben’s new book is Math Games with Bad Drawings.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the game Quarto. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a slinky. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the nodal cubic. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. We go closer to the cutting edge of research than usual in this chat with Angela Tabiri about her PhD research.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the PageRank algorithm. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a joke. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Bec Hill.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a hairy ball. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a superegg. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Hannah Fry.

A conversation about mathematical jokes, humour and folklore inspired by a sheep, at least one side of which is black. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

The jokes sent to Peter on Twitter that we mention can be found in the replies to this tweet.

Your favourite maths jokes please. I thank you.

— Peter Rowlett (@peterrowlett) June 14, 2021

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a plate of biscuits. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Alison Kiddle. What do you notice? What do you wonder?

Alison’s Noticing and wondering page.

We also mentioned A Problem Squared Episode 014 = Final Cheese Drama and Quick-Fire-O-Rama.

You can see Peter’s kitchen floor in this tweet.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Spirograph set. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

Katie’s Spirograph GeoGebra file.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a balancing bird. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Alom Shaha.

Alom’s video and template about the balancing bird.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by UUID 0412a969-5b27-4c28-9662-85ef2c201e0c. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by an auctioneer’s hammer. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Tim Harford.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by cards from the game Dobble. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. You can read more about Katie’s adventures in golfing combinatorics.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by an arbelos. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Catriona Agg.

Catriona mentions this proof without words, which is taken from Proof Without Words: The Area of an Arbelos by Roger B. Nelsen in Mathematics Magazine.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a box of Christmas crackers. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. Merry Christmas!

A conversation about mathematics inspired by an Enigma machine. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Tom Briggs.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by some solids of constant width. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a ball of wool (yarn). Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Pat Ashforth.

For anyone who gets their podcasts through YouTube, and for the attention of anyone who didn’t already know about the Mathematical Objects podcast, we’ve started posting old episodes on the Aperiodical’s YouTube channel, and will do so once a week (10am GMT on Mondays) until we catch up with the current episode.

The first episode is on Towers of Hanoi, and there’s a playlist where all future episodes will be added. For more information about the podcast, visit our page on the site.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a lottery machine. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Klein bottle and Mathsteroids. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Matthew Scroggs.

Play Mathsteriods!

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a hat. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics and education inspired by a hundred square. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Susan Okereke.

In the episode, we mentioned the original Prime Climb colouring sheet and Peter’s Prime Climb colouring sheet on GitHub as drawing-primes.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Twenty Pence coin. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

@stecks Despite sounding like French name, Franz Reuleaux was German (I only 'discovered' that when I read what I wrote about him some years ago.)

— Pat Ashforth (1948 – 2021) (@matheknitician) August 29, 2020

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a vehicle. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Christopher Danielson.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Möbius band. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a mandala. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Hana Ayoob.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by acoustic mirrors. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest James Grime.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by number block cubes/snap cubes. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

Peter’s blog post: Mathematical play with young children.

Mike Lawler’s three-tweet thread of more advanced ideas starts here:

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Rubik’s Cube. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a set of D&D dice. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

Katie and Peter give a little update on the podcast, life in lockdown and the upcoming season/series 3.

A conversation about combinatorics, the mathematics of counting, inspired by a robot caterpillar. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about the mathematics of chemistry inspired by a pencil, plus a chat about approximation. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics including fractals inspired by a Romanesco Broccoli. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, idea suggested by John Read (thanks John!).

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a deck of Set cards. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

We mentioned‬ an implementation of Set in Python by Ben Nuttall and a retro NES version by Katie.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the game Ox Blocks. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Correntator, a mechanical adding machine. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Christian Lawson-Perfect.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the pseudorhombicuboctahedron. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a pair of skipping ropes. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a thermometer. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Noughts and Crosses (Tic Tac Toe) board, covering Noughts and Crosses, a surprising number of variants, with a bit of higher dimensions and topology for good measure. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

Fun! Thanks for the shoutout @stecks and @peterrowlett. My rules for 4D noughts and crosses are here, if anyone wants a look. :) https://t.co/ryATOQOZiK pic.twitter.com/XANkyz9W5N

— David Butler (@DavidKButlerUoA) June 21, 2019

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a tangerine (no, really!). Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a pile of matchsticks. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a set of Tantrix tiles, a beaded necklace and some juggling balls. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Alex Corner.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a stick of chalk. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by a t-shirt featuring Pythagoras’ theorem. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

A conversation about mathematics inspired by the Towers of Hanoi puzzle. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett.

Update: Here’s a lovely knitted Towers of Hanoi, tweeted in response to this episode by Pat Ashforth.

@mathsobjects @aperiodical I have a knitted one (and a larger crochet one with ten rings) https://t.co/NCah3d24LQ pic.twitter.com/l6L0Jpi6G8

— Pat Ashforth (1948 – 2021) (@matheknitician) April 1, 2019

Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, episodes of Mathematical Objects will take an object, real or abstract, as inspiration to chat about a mathematical topic. This introduction explains the idea ahead of the first episode, coming soon.