DMFT rocked.

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician, on a renewed mission to spread the joy and delight in maths after a tremendous few days at the Talking Maths in Public conference. I listed some highlights here, and decided that rather than try to fit into job-shaped holes, I shall continue in my goal to emulate Terry Tao by being a friendly firehose of maths. (Still, hire me for cool maths projects!)

What happens at TMiP… needs to be shouted around the world, honestly, especially if you’re thinking of the Pseudorandom Ensemble show. We rocked. People were coming up to me all week and reminding me that the Pope’s got notes on polytopes. You can probably hire us to do a show if you’ve got a crowd who’d like us.

The other thing to mention is that tomorrow is DMFT’s birthday. Issue 0 went live on September 4th last year. Looking back, it took a while to settle down into its current format, didn’t it? I hope you’re still enjoying it. Do spread the word!

Links

A fascinating link via Martin Whitworth, the story of Thomas Fowler (pdf), a contemporary of Babbage who actually built a working computer some time around 1840. About 150 years later, people built another wooden computer to play noughts and crosses (pdf), via Robin Houston.

Puzzle games, you say? At one point, I hoped to do my fourth year undergraduate project on Minesweeper. Oscar Cunningham has done the sort of analysis I’d have liked to, with additional discussion on mathstodon involving Simon Tatham, who knows a thing or two about it.

If you’ve designed games, you’ve probably thought about grids. Here’s something on triangular ones, and a tutorial on hexagonal ones.

Patterns? Helena Verrill, who was at TMiP, has a lovely page of interactive animations.

Perhaps, like my dear friend Marla, you’ve tried to play the theremin, but unlike Marla, found it difficult to play. Well, it’s your lucky day: Linus Akesson has invented a theremin with a keyboard, a qweremin.

Currently

Lots of currently, currently. Let’s start with the news that Project Picross ended successfully: the human race collectively solved all (just short of) 25,000,000 five-by-five solvable nonograms.

There was to be a Finite Group livestream with the incredible Hana Ayoob this week, but owing to a scheduling clash, it’s been rearranged for September 25th. It’s worth joining the group in the meantime, if only to hang out with cool maths people.

Tickets are available for Big MathsJam which is in Milton Keynes this year – a new venue, that’s hopefully a bit more accessible. Early-bird prices end on September 30th.

My good friend Tom “Thomas K Briggs” Briggs has a book out now. I’ve read it and reviewed it here. I liked it. Another good friend, Rob Eastaway, has recently rearranged his blog under keywords. I enjoyed this post about failed conversions.

Lastly, it’s the start of a new month, which means it’s time for a Carnival of Mathematics – and I’ve collated this one. Next month’s host is Ioanna Georgiou, and you can submit items for it 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

* Edited to correct the spelling of Helena Verrill’s name. Apologies — and thanks to Colin Wright for catching it.