IB Maths Resources from Intermathematics
IB Maths Resources: 300 IB Maths Exploration ideas, video tutorials and Exploration Guides
Sierpinski Triangle: A picture of infinity This pattern of a Sierpinski triangle pictured above was generated by a simple iterative program. I made it by modifying the code previously used to plot the Barnsley Fern. You can run the code I used on repl.it. What we are seeing is the result of 30,000 iterations of a simple... Continue Reading →
Crack the Beale Papers and find a $65 Million buried treasure? The story of a priceless buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels (worth around $65 million in today's money) began in January 1822. A stranger by the name of Thomas Beale walked into the Washington Hotel Virginia with a locked iron box, which he gave... Continue Reading →
Murder in the Maths Department A murder has been committed in the maths department! A body has been discovered surrounded by mathematical objects and only the hardworking maths teachers were in school, doing long division sums for fun at the weekend. One of them must be the murderer. (The wall of fame of successful detectives... Continue Reading →
This is inspired from the great site, Practical Cryptography which is a really good resource for code making and code breaking. One of their articles is about how we can use the Chi Squared test to crack a Caesar Shift code. Indeed, if you use an online program to crack a Caesar shift, they are... Continue Reading →
Crypto Analysis to Crack Vigenere Ciphers (This post assumes some familiarity with both Vigenere and Ceasar Shift Ciphers. You can do some background reading on them here first). We can crack a Vigenere Cipher using mathematical analysis. Vigenere Ciphers are more difficult to crack than Caesar Shifts, however they are still susceptible to mathematical techniques. ... Continue Reading →
NSA Code Breaking Puzzle Number 2 Here is the second of the NSA's code breaking tweets - crack them all and you might have a chance of a job with the super-secret digital spying agency. Rimfinnpeqcnvqauuagcrdokvdisn drdcrpigaisacpsdffaicvhakcfdqfpq detrkilfaecnpqacakqisacpfampoa cfimannicfakdumfalddnraprf After a few attempts it looks a bit harder than the first one - it's not... Continue Reading →
Code Breakers Wanted by the NSA The American National Security Agency have just launched a new code breaking challenge. The tweet above is the first in their series for those interested in a career in code breaking. The NSA are possibly in search of some good publicity after the revelations of Edward Snowden with... Continue Reading →
The School Code Challenge is based on a similar competition that GCHQ (The UK digital spy agency) are running. My clues will however be a little more accessible! I have created a number of codes that need to be broken. Each code will give a password. When you crack the code, follow the link and... Continue Reading →