Double Maths First Thing: Issue 6

Double Maths First Thing is to maths news what the noticeboard outside the coffee shop is to theorems

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread delight and joy while making people think.

More from me!

I almost forgot (so strongly do I dislike the academic publishing process) that I had a paper published recently about Heron’s formula. One of the reasons I dislike it is that T&F want to charge you £45 of those sterling pounds to read a four-page paper, which is patently ridiculous. I can send you a copy if you want one. You definitely shouldn’t paste the DOI reference, 10.1080/0025570X.2024.2376510, into SciHub, or else the whole publishing system might collapse! (In fact, you can read the proof and the story behind it here).

I’ve also done my stint volunteering for Dorset Coding Day at a couple of local schools. The best questions I was asked were “how many pages were in your books?” and “what’s your favourite Netflix movie?”. Not a single more-of-a-comment, ten-year-olds are brilliant.

And in an email that made me grin from ear, a Tudor living historian emailed me to say he’d read my piece about Henslowe’s trick and is now performing it at events. How amazing is that?

Links from everywhere!

Sometimes, people use the word “intuitive” for something that doesn’t line up with my intuition at all — but that’s ok, it’s good to see how other people’s minds work. For example, Gregory Gundersen’s piece on the Black-Scholes equation doesn’t match with how I’d explain it, but it’s still a lovely piece!

I haven’t yet got around to reading this article on the Kelly Criterion, but it’s a topic that always makes me prick up my ears. From my recollection, it turns out that “maximising expected returns” means roughly “small chance of an enormous jackpot, otherwise ruin”, but it’s a fascinating thing to play with.

Another item on my to-read list is this guide to transforming colours with matrices. This feels all sorts of wrong, but at first glance, it seems to work nicely!

Lastly, from memory lane, one of my favourite pieces of mathematical writing: Tim Gowers on deducing the cubic formula. A Fields Medallist explaining how to think about something? Clearly and lucidly? Sign me right up.

I’m also midway through Grant Sanderson explaining Manim to Ben Sparks and now I want to make videos just so I have an excuse to play with it.

Community!

In a move closely aligned with my key themes, the Finite Group have opened up their Discord to free-tier members. Among other things, it’s a great source of memes and somewhere you can suffer an endless stream of bad jokes, not all of which are from me. (The amazing live-streams — the next of which is on Wednesday 23rd October at 2pm UK time — are paid content, and worth every penny.)

Gathering4Gardner, best-known for their biennial gatherings that inspired Big MathsJam, but who do all sorts of amazing work, have a fundraising auction starting next week. I refuse to look at it because I have to dispose my income on fixing my laptop, but there might be something there that tickles your fancy!

Speaking of Big MathsJam, Tuesday coming is Little MathsJam Day — find your local Jam here or, failing that, start your own! It’s simple enough that I can do it. Instructions are on that page.

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 courtesy of my dear friends 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