Double Maths First Thing is 3D-printing Cristiano Ronaldo

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight that comes from engaging with maths. I understand there’s a soccerball elimination in progress at the moment; I am paying little attention until the last game of the group stage, where there’s interesting maths to be had. (At least this time it seems that Scotland’s inevitable Scotlanding-up and Scotlanding-out will be in the “decent effort, not quite enough” category rather than the “dismal humiliation” I’d feared.)

Links

In football news, Kit Yates has advice on stickerbooking, something Ayliean has talked about on the radio, but you might prefer to see written down. Matt Scroggs has covered it, too. Kit has a new book out, You Don’t Know What You’re Missing, which he talks about on his substack.

I loved this collection of quotes from Pieces of Mathematics, especially Richard Hammack‘s “Frustration is a natural part of anything that’s worth doing.” I don’t know if Richard is a parent, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

This week, we’ve got a video round-up! Let’s start with Kokichi Sugihara’s ambiguous cyclinders, for which I’ve long had a soft spot, and move directly on to the fabulous Kat Phillips on palindromic ages.

Via Katie Steckles, The Futility Closet has a curiosity – can you see why it works? Can you find similar examples? It’s written down at the Archimedes lab (a wonderful old-school resource on interesting numbers) as if it only applies to 92.

You’re here for mathematical joy? Christian’s write up of Beach Spectres has that in spades. Or at least in oversized cookie-cutters.

Currently

There’s a lot of currently at the moment!

Tuesday coming is the traditional monthly MathsJam in pubs around the world; I’ll be at the Weymouth one as usual. Tickets are also on sale for this year’s Big MathsJam, which is over my birthday weekend. I imagine I’ll be there.

In exhibitions news, I hear the Escher exhibition at Somerset House is excellent; I’m also pointed to an exhibition on John Aubrey in Chippenham.

The next few MathsWorld lates look phenomenal – Samira Mian Tuesday coming (June 23rd, 6:15pm, £5-£8), Henry Segerman next month (Tuesday July 28th, 6:15pm) – and if you are or wish to become a fan of the Pseudorandom Ensemble, you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for the September show.

Those of you looking for maths communication training probably ought to spend £15 to book in to Katie Steckles and Ben Sparks’ LMS workshop, which is running online this week (Thursday June 18th). Absolute steal.

Lastly, the prompts for this year’s TMiP Animation Collaboration Challenge have dropped – June’s challenge is on “checkerboards”.

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

(Special thanks to CLP, Katie, Kit, Tom, David and Max for extra help with DMFT this week.)