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Double Maths First Thing: Issue 15

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Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in maths, and to encourage people to take pride in the maths they do.

Straight into it this week!

Let’s start with a callback to Issue E and the assertion that the Alhambra Palace contains all 17 wallpaper groups. Via Christian Lawson-Perfect’s always-fascinating Interesting Esoterica, a paper from Branko Grünbaum saying “no, actually, it doesn’t.” (After all, you can’t just have one link the Alhambra, it’s a bit Moorish).

Somewhat architecture-related, a nice post about procedurally generating infinite worlds using a wave collapse function. I’ve only skimmed it, but it certainly generates cool pictures.

And while we’re doing tiles, Demaine and Langerman have apparently proved that tiling the plane with three simple polygons is… undecidable. Always nice to see something apparently simple being considerably more complicated than it looks.

Currently

I’m given to believe that there’s a new maths-related thriller show available for streaming on Apple TV+ called Prime Target — I wouldn’t know, I haven’t upgraded from Netflviii. The reviews appear to range from “unlikeable but silly” to “hilariously bad”, so do with that what you will.

There is another Clopen Mic Night in the works, the first in over a year — if you’re interested in doing a bit, submissions are open here.

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

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