Because there’s really no excuse for ho-ho-ho-CAH-TOA

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread mathematical joy and delight, without recourse to magical reindeer.

Somewhat embarrassingly, I’ve shown up for class outside of term-time but then… so have you. Let’s make the most of it!

This week’s pictures

Let’s start with a fun picture. Ed Brims — beekeper-magician, which is a job title I never knew I wanted — has constructed an Euler diagram of which characters in Beatrix Potter show up in the same story, and it turns out looking like Jemima Puddle-duck. Splendid stuff.

Another nice, but significantly different visualisation: Raffi Hotter (who is not, to the best of my knowledge, an otter from the world of Beatrixp), has a really lovely tool for plotting spherical harmonics.

One of the many things on my to-learn list for 2025 is some music theory. A good starting point might be Roeland Hollander‘s article on the geometry of scales.

Various other links

You’ve probably heard the claim that Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer. But you probably haven’t looked in detail at what Note G actually did. Luckily, this piece by Sinclair Target at two-bit history examines that closely, and gives a run-down of the competing claims about Lovelace.

I’m somewhat interested in the intersection between maths and fiction (I can neither confirm nor deny that I’m working on some short stories for 8-12 year olds); if you are, you might find Alex Kasman’s database of mathematical fiction.

Over at Mathstodon, John Carlos Baez is spreading the word about pi’s evil twin, the lemniscate constant.

Festive nonsense

As a grudging concession to Christmas, I’ll link to the Finite Group and friends doing a flawless(?) Secret Santa and send out a last call for Scroggsvent — I’m happy to report that I got three wrong first time out but have now completed the puzzle and saved Christmas; I believe you have until the end of the year to take part if you want to be in with the chance of a prize.

I understand it’s also Hanukkah imminently. I didn’t know until quite recently that the chocolate coins in one’s stocking are more of a Hanukkah tradition than a Christmas one: they’re used for playing a game of luck called dreidel. Apparently — and I have no personal position on this — it’s a terrible game.

That’s all I’ve got for this year! Thanks for sticking with me, there will me more to come in the new year. 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.

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