Double Maths First Thing is not, and has never been, a Grade 2* listed building.

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in learning, understanding and doing maths. I’ve just had an excellent long weekend in the University of Warwick Maths Houses at a writing retreat, surrounded by people on the same wavelength. Sadly, my bedroom was one of the ones without a blackboard, but I still managed a lot of writing (and whisper it, the fiction project is very close to ready-to-share. I was on the wrong end of several glares on the way home because I was giggling at my own jokes.)

Links

Last time out I mentioned Conway’s Game of Life, but forgot to mention the reason I was thinking about it: fortunately Rob Low (not that one) is on the ball and points us all at the newly-discovered one-dimensional spaceship.

One thing about Double Maths First Thing you might have spotted is that I don’t usually link to videos or short-form videos, mainly because it’s not my preferred way to consume content. If I did, I’d almost certainly be following Kat Phillips, who (among many other things) does cool work with paper artist Coco Sato.

Another cool arty thing (filed under fun toys I definitely don’t need): how about a typewriter plotter?

I own a number of slide rules, although I tend not to use them much. In case you want to know how they work, here’s a nice article from Amen Zwa.

I haven’t dug into the details of Victor Poughon’s bidirectional spreadsheet, but it’s (at least superficially) a lovely idea.

Currently

Scroggsvent continues. I’m a few days behind, but I’ll catch up before long.

Sanjeev at the Scribble Board is hosting January’s carnival – post your links at the usual page.

There’s a Finite Group livestream tomorrow, generally one of the most joyful hours of my month.

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