Double Maths First Thing: Issue 4

Double Maths First Thing is Colin’s weekly news bulletin. Although it’s more like a nerfpelletin, honestly.

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to help everyone find the joy and delight in figuring things out.

Art!

Up in that London they have these days, the Piccadilly Circus ad boards are being taken over by Olafur Eliasson. While this doesn’t look especially mathematical, a lot of Eliasson’s work is gorgeously so.

I took the kids to a science fair recently, and they tried their hand at marbling with actual paint… and wet paper, which ripped before we’d left the venue. Fortunately, I was reminded that it’s possible to do marbling mathematically. And it’s invertible, so you can recover your original image!

Speaking of inverses, that’s today’s Mathober prompt! FractalKitty is running it again; it’s a prompt-a-day, make-what-you-like challenge. (Personally, I’m trying to write a song verse every day; I know Katie is trying to write a daily crossword clue. The possibilities are endless.)

Computing!

Following on from the “computers are magic” thing last week, I’ve stumbled on, but not checked out, Arithmazium, which seems to be an explanation of how computers deal with numbers. Or, from a brief glance, doughnuts.

Shapes!

Once upon a time, I wrote about Ailles’ Rectangle — if you inexplicably prefer Wikipedia to my blog, here’s your link. It’s a really neat way to figure out the trig values for 15-75-90 degree triangles, and — if you play about with it a bit, to prove all sorts of identities.

Dave Richeson spotted a naughty cartoon in the New Yorker — not seaside-postcard naughty, more British road-sign naughty.

Obsessions!

The Mathematical Objects podcast is off to a flier in Season 8, chatting with Adam Townsend about possibly the greatest MathsJam talk ever.

There is one that rivals it for commitment to the bit: Ben Ashforth’s calendar odyssey.

I’ll be speaking at this year’s Big MathsJam, but I promise I will not be visiting every cell on the border of Camelot. It’s barely a month away. Eek!

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In the meantime, if you have friends and/or colleagues who would enjoy Double Maths First Thing, do send them the link to sign up — they’ll be very welcome here.

If you’ve missed the previous issues of DMFT or — somehow — this one, you can find the archive right here at the Aperiodical.

That’s all for this week! If there’s something I should know about, you can find me on Mathstodon as @icecolbeveridge, or at my personal website. You can also just reply to this email if there’s something I should be aware of.

Until next time,

C