Double Maths First Thing adds a Holy C

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight of figuring things out. Here in Weymouth, we’re sweltering but lucky 12yo is about to jet off to Barcelona for a week of paddleboarding and kayaking (no word about Catalan catamarans, sadly). When I mentioned that we have world-class water sports facilities less than five miles away on Portland, he responded with the single word: churros. Excellent point, well made.

My day was made yesterday by AndyK in the Finite Group, who shared a papal encyclical from earlier this month with the immortal quote:

This concept can also be illustrated by the image of a multifaceted polyhedron, [19] in which the one truth of the Gospel is reflected from different angles.

Fans of the Pseudorandom Ensemble will recognise my excitement that the Pope actually DOES have notes on polytopes.

Links

A couple of unrelated articles: one from 2002 about blind mathematicians and one from 2015 about how efficiently you can run a golf course.

In “more daily games you definitely don’t need”, you might want to figure out a wikipedia article from its tags or to identify a UK station’s three-letter code or learn the basics of cryptic crosswords. Or, you can improve your Yahtzee chances by reading Ioanna Giorgiou’s article about it.

Meanwhile, Andrew Taylor once made a liturgical date-picker, which serves to highlight the absurdity of time as a concept. Since we’re on the topic of terrible things, here’s the aperiodic table. And in correlation/causation news, the longer the Wikipedia article, the bigger the reptile.

Non-Euclidean Dreamer has been drawing links on isometric paper. Love it. At MathsJam last week, we were trying to draw numbers on isometric paper. Print your own isopaper here!

It’s never too early to plan out the last day of term, and I’ve had suggested to me The Train Game (via Math Equals Love), Factors and Multiples from NRICH, and maths escape rooms via Kate Farrell at Data Education in schools*.

Currently

Submit your carnival bits so Sophia of Fractal Kitty can turn them into a post – deadline is before the next DMFT, so chop-chop!

The next Finite Group livestream is on Thursday June 25th, 5pm UK time.

We’re only a week and a half away from Beach Spectres in Whitley Bay (Saturday June 6th and Sunday June 7th).

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

* Corrected 2025-05-27; I incorrectly attributed this to Dr Katherine Holmes. Apologies to both Kates.