Double Maths First Thing is tangled up in knots
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight in doing and discussing maths.
This week I have been in error-recovery mode after drawing a wrong conclusion on a consulting project. Compared to Chris Lewicki’s classic, it wasn’t a disaster, but it’s still going to take a bit of work to put right. I’ve been very carefully modelling “how to respond when you screw something up” to the rest of the team; own the mistake, figure out the root cause, and do all you can to put it right.
Links
Eyal Weiss has been in touch with a demonstration of the Parrondo paradox, two losing games that, played alternately, are a winning game. His Wonderlattice site is full of cool experiments. Have a play! Another lovely gave via Ben Cornish about knot theory. (I love that the French for puzzle is ‘casse-tête’, or ‘head-breaker’.)
Also in games: suggestions on how to use HexSum in the classroom.
Why did the beach cry? Because of dear friends Ayliean and Elizabeth making terrible jokes about the maths of seaweed.
I enjoyed this short thread about a developer spending decades fixing a perspective bug that bothered them under very restrictive conditions.
And finally, a drama I missed at the time: a mysterious mathematician popping up on Math.SE with solutions to very hard integrals. Turned out to be a physicist trolling the mathematicians, because of course it did.
Currently
Ben Leis’s Carnival post is up! You can submit your links for Sam Hartburn to assemble here. If you’re interested in hosting a Carnival (receive links, make blog post after a month), reply to this message and let me know! It’s a nice way to show up in the maths community.
The playlist for September’s Animation Generation Collaboration is out, showing two very different ways of animating a proof without words. If you want to join in for October, you can find all the details at https://talkingmathsinpublic.uk/animation/
Brigitte Stenhouse is talking about Mary Somerville. Apparently that’s just a fair bet at any given moment in time, but she’ll be doing it at the LSE in London on Wednesday October 14th at 6:30pm. Tickets are free.
Katie Steckles and Ben Sparks are running a pair of two-day Maths Communication training workshops in
Edinburgh (November 23rd-24th) and Bristol (February 24th-25th 2027).
Also in Edinburgh, Madeleine Shepherd has an exhibition involving mathematically-themed textiles in Coburg Street until Sunday October 11th.
The next Finite Group live stream is on Sunday evening (8pm UK time, October 11th) and is all about random numbers.
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