Double Maths First Thing: Issue 26

Double Maths First Thing shaves newsletters if and only if they don’t shave themselves

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in puzzles, problem-solving and practicing maths.

I’m currently wading through the combinatorics of meteorology, which is another way of saying “this walk is a bit muddier than I expected”. Coincidentally, I’m also thinking about the maths of rainstorms, which is much more exciting than the practicalities of navigating the dog through them.

Links

You don’t have to be in Aoteroa to appreciate Maths Craft New Zealand’s resources — I love things like step-by-step instructions on meanders — and (for example) @welshpixie’s guide to drawing Celtic knots, which inspired Andrew Taylor’s Celtix.

If you feel like maths games should be less knotty and more numerical, Andrew has you covered there, too: his newest offering is Ophex; I am annoyed that I recently lost my perfect streak, so it’s dead to me now.

For a change of pace, you might want to read Toby Lam’s piece on differentiating inverses graphically. I’ve only skimmed it, because it has diagrams with arrows in that remind me of my Erasmus year in France, where I understood the French perfectly, but the maths was gibberish to me.

I have mixed feelings about this piece in defence of Venn Diagrams by Jack Murtagh. It’s lovely as far as it goes (I was surprised to realise that Venn diagrams are less than 150 years old), but it doesn’t go very far — I suspect this is a function of SciAm’s word count limits.

Back in [Issue 21](), I mentioned Fractran; Tzerjen Wei has a working interpreter in case you want to try it for yourself.

Currently

This afternoon (Wednesday May 28th, 5pm UK time), Paul Lockhart, author of Lockhart’s Lament, is doing an AMA.

You’ve got a few days left to submit anything interesting to Carnival of Mathematics 240, which will be hosted by Suzza at Beauty of Mathematics.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. 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.

Meanwhile, 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 you want to tell me.

Until next time,

C