Magical Mathematics – Ideas for Exploration/Project Topics

Chances are that the word “exploration” will be often pronounced in IB Mathematics classes around the world this year, in the spring of  2014 the first exploration have to be ready. Naturally there will be a lot of questions and uncertainties…

Maybe the most important requirement to keep in mind is that the process has to be enjoyable and fun, or as the IB Guide states it has to “allow all to experience a feeling of success”. Then you better choose a topic that you like.

If you are still uncertain what topic to choose read further about an interesting mathematician – meet Stanford Statistics and Mathematics professor Persi Diaconis.

[youtuber youtube=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdA7TeoZD_g’]

You can read more about him in this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education from 2011. Prof Diaconis has written also a book “Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks”

You might want to choose a trick from there and explain or describe the mathematics related to it.

If you can not find this book in a nearby library then you might want to check another similar (free) book on the web – The Manual of Mathematical Magic. Its author – Peter McOwan is Professor of Computer Science in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London and a lifelong amateur magician. He is also a founder of another interesting site, a potential source for topics related with computer science and algorithms, Computer Science for Fun.

Well, as I said before, “Fun” is the key word. Hope you can find something you like and remember, focus on the mathematics  😉