Interactive Chart: Diagram Representing the Mortality in the Hospitals at Scutari and Kulali, from Oct 1st 1854 to Sept 20th 1855

The activity below is the second of four produced for the University of Nottingham's Florence Nightingale Comes Home project. With another mouthful of a title, Diagram Representing the Mortality in the Hospitals at Scutari and Kulali, from Oct 1st 1854 to Sept 20th 1855 looks at death rates in Crimean military hospitals, comparing them to annual average death rates in London military hospitals for the same period.

This is a Polar Area Chart, which isn't something that comes up a lot in school maths classrooms, but there are some interesting comparisons with Pie Charts (and even Histograms) to be noticed. There's also an opportunity for discussion on the purpose of percentages, if you look closely!

Nightingale is known very well as "the Lady with the Lamp," but her contributions to mathematics are something that many people are unfortunately unaware of. She changed the face of (and attitudes towards) data visualisation in the UK, using easily understood visuals to tell the stories embedded in data that was otherwise unreadable to non-mathematicians, including politicians and royalty.

You can find the full collection of classroom resources for the Florence Nightingale at Home project at the link below:

Nightingale Classroom Resources

Want to learn more about data visualisation in statistics? Try this free course from Alison.

What Would Florence Nightingale Make of Big Data?

From the BBC's "ideas" series, here's David Spiegelhalter introducing Florence Nightingale's work on statistics in a 4-minute video, and looking at how we can use the same principals to make sense of the data that is thrown at us from all angles in today's superconnected world!

The Bletchley Park 30 Day Challenge

Back in March 2020, just before the first Covid-19 Lockdown I was still working at Bletchley Park and with input from some of my colleagues in the Learning team devised 30 challenges which were tweeted 3 per week over the following 10 weeks. We bashed these out over the weekend, in our own time, before being furloughed but a whole load of love (and mild obsession) for all things Bletchley Park went into devising these in a short space of time.

Now we're in our third (ish) lockdown, for most of the people who worked on them their time at BP is but a distant memory, having been made redundant* some months ago. The challenges themselves have disappeared into the depths of BP's social media feeds... until now!

I've collected all 30 tweeted challenges and embedded them into one page so that you can work through them all at your leisure, or just pick and choose the ones you fancy!

Click the screenshot below to find them (but don't tell anyone! Mum's the word...**):

If you click on the timestamp at the bottom of each embedded tweet you will be taken to the original post on twitter, where you can see conversations resulting from each one, and maybe get one started again! Better still, why not respond to the original posts for the challenges you complete with a picture or other content showing off your work!

* Including me. Needless to say, neither this post nor the page to which it points are at all sanctioned or endorsed by the Bletchley Park Trust and if they'd compiled these challenges on their own website I would certainly have linked to that instead.

** No isn't. Please tell everyone! It's not secret any more...

Could You be a Codebreaker?

A short set of activities designed to demonstrate a range of skills required by Bletchley Park's codebreakers, highlighting the intersection of a number of mathematical skills with things that are often not thought of as being mathematical (but very definitely are!)

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 18 ⚙️ - Could you be a Codebreaker?

Take a look at the list at the beginning of this activity sheet ⬇️ https://t.co/e5ZAPExfUI

Which skills do you already have? Which ones do you need to work on? pic.twitter.com/ldPRLcoVIX

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) May 16, 2020

Make Your Own Enigma Machine

The history of cryptology is one that is rife with examples of mathematics, with a significant burst of advancements in the first half of the 20th Century. An iconic player in this period is the Enigma machine,  arguably the most famous cryptographical device ever whilst also being the subject of many an varied misunderstandings and misconceptions. Where better to start understanding it, and its place in mathematical history, than by building a physical emulator of your own...

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 12 - Build and learn to use your own Crisp Tube Enigma machine! ⚙️

Instructions and printables can be found here ➡️ https://t.co/VT9iXCCRhT

Share your creations with us! 🔎 #MuseumFromHome pic.twitter.com/PQLwZArIbW

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) May 2, 2020

... and comparing it to the real thing?

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 12 - Build and learn to use your own Crisp Tube Enigma machine! ⚙️

Instructions and printables can be found here ➡️ https://t.co/VT9iXCCRhT

Share your creations with us! 🔎 #MuseumFromHome pic.twitter.com/PQLwZArIbW

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) May 2, 2020

Make a Caesar Wheel

The Caesar shift cipher was an early method of encrypting information and is often used as an entrypoint to the world of cryptography, cryptanalysis and cryptology, which is itself an inherently mathematical discipline.

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 02 - Make a Caesar Wheel and try encrypting your own messages ⚙️

Here's your very own Bletchley Park template and a how-to guide ➡️ https://t.co/7LdL5fKK6m

Try encrypting some messages and send them to family and friends! ✉️

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) April 9, 2020

The above challenge was followed a few days later by a further, related challenge:

#TheBletchleyParkChallenge 09 ⚙️ - Make your Caesar Wheel messages harder to break!

If you have a Caesar wheel and know how to use it (see day two’s challenge!) you can make messages harder to break by using a key word (rather than just one shift).https://t.co/Fbl5c0Hb9j

— Bletchley Park (@bletchleypark) April 25, 2020

Venus Transits and the Size of the Solar System

This entry in 2020's Big Lock-Down Math-Off hosted by the Aperiodical introducess the Venus transits of the 1600s and their importance in developing an early understanding of the true scale of our Solar system (when the page loads, scroll about half way down to find the article).

Venus Transits and the Size of the Solar System: https://aperiodical.com/2020/05/the-big-lock-down-math-off-match-23/

And you can find out more about Venus at Blogstronomy! 

Mathematical Quotes

Around 400 quotes about mathematics and from mathematicians, collated by Colin Beveridge of Flying Colours Maths.

Mathematical Quotes: https://www.flyingcoloursmaths.co.uk/mathematical-quotes/

100 (ish) of these are available for purchase as an ebook for Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3h0DVhv

Codebreakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes

Most people have at least heard of Bletchley Park, the UK's codebreaking centre during World War II. Even if you haven't heard of the place, you've probably at least heard the name of the most famous code to be cracked by them: Enigma.

This BBC program details the history behind an even tougher code that is less well known, but appears to have been just as vital to the war effort as deciphering Enigma-encoded messages. The story is also one of the people behind the scenes, especially two mathematicians whose contributions, although invaluable, have gone largely unrecognised by history.

The Lost Heroes of the title are Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers, both of whom made significant steps in the race to understand and decode messages sent by Nazi forces: Tutte made great strides in understanding with regards to machine-based ciphers, and Flowers designed and developed the world's first electronic computer, Colossus, in an effort to speed up the process by which messages were decoded.

Timewatch - Code-breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016ltm0/timewatch-codebreakers-bletchley-parks-lost-heroes