Now that my work with the OU is over for the moment and I can relax again, I have been turning my attention back to my main interest, numbers. As I planned to do, I have begun reading Elements of Number Theory by John Stillwell and have started working through the first chapter. This is one of many books in the Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics series published by Springer. This book appealed to me because it is based on a lecture course with exercises to work through (there are no solutions mind you) and it isn't just a mass of theorems, as some books on number theory are.
Some interesting bits that I have seen so far are Fibonacci's algorithm for Egyptian fractions, the McNugget problem, binary numerals for numbers using division with remainder and some bits about Mersenne primes and perfect numbers. I might try and describe some of these topics here and show some of the nice simple proofs and properties.
For those of you who like tinkering around with computer programs and numbers I also have a blog where I describe some simple programs that I have written for a Casio programmable calculator. Have a look at http://casio-fx-50f-plus.blogspot.co.uk/.
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