DMFT is grateful for the last minute.
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight of doing maths and solving problems.
Today I went to a school in Poole to talk about my career in maths and computing as part of Dorset Coding Week. They asked me great questions and then I helped them with a Scratch project. One of the kids did a double fistpump when they got their code to work and I was thrilled – that’s the sort of joy and delight I want to be spreading.
(Also, apparently I’m now available again for going into schools to talk and do workshops. Rates reasonable.)
Links
Let’s start with another joyful coding experience: Sarah Spencer used a Raspberry Pi and a 1980s knitting machine to knit a map of the sky. Amazing stuff.
OK, fine, we’re all in on stuff that makes me grin this week. Here are depictions of various algorithms in the style of IKEA instructions. As Saga Norén (Länskrim Malmö) would say, “bra.”
Some origami, too: how to make a lovely square, Bauhaus-style.
Colin Wright has reminded me of a fabulous pattern in the powers of 2, 5 and 10, and invites “intuitive” explanations.
And lastly: feast your brains on the ambigram hall of fame. Some of these are incredible.
Currently
Carnival of Mathematics 243 is live at Ioanna Georgiou’s blog; next month’s is hosted by Robin at Theorem of the Day, one of the Carnival’s most stalwart contributors.
Mathober is still going strong – my favourite contribution so far is Oscar’s polyhedral alignment chart.
If you’re interested in shaping the future of Bletchley Park (and encouraging them to make more of the maths they have), they’re recruiting a focus group.
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