Double Maths First Thing didn’t know the letters went that big.
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to share the joy and delight I take in figuring stuff out and solving puzzles. This weekend just gone, I went to the not-yet-open MathsWorld venue in Southwark to hang out with my geeks and practise calculating pi by hand. Young Bill was thrilled that Matt Parker signed his calculator, and I’ve spent the last couple of days reading up on ways that might improve the method. Turns out Leonhard Euler was pretty clever, who knew?
I also got to meet the co-author of the maths/art crossover short stories I’ve been working on for ages – we’re getting closer and closer to a first draft, and I’m really excited about it.
Links
Microsoft Excel turns 40 on September 30th, or (as it insists) 3.33333333. Ever wanted to turn your photos into a spreadsheet? This has Andrew Taylor’s fingerprints all over it.
Waiting for the optician the other day, Bill asked to play Wordle as if we were still in 2021. I think Mastermind is a better game, and Erik Göransson Gaspar has a lovely article about optimal play.
Another good strategy game: Paper soccer, which I recall stealing a great deal of time from me back in the day.
On one hand, I loathe headlines that start with the word “This”, a symptom of the Buzzfeedification of everything, but I’ll make an exception here: a chap in New York state has built a scale model of NYC. Maths? Sometimes it’s ok just to share something cool.
Another cool thing: an investigation into the physics of badminton. It’s not a sport I play, and if it was, I don’t think the sport I would play would be the same sport as people who use a spin serve play
And let’s end with some research on the effectiveness of graphs in climate science, where a study finds that binaries (yes/no) are more effective at convincing the public than continuous graphs.
Currently
There’s a Finite Group livestream with scicomm legend Hana Ayoob on the maths of colour tomorrow, September 25th at 12 noon UK time. (I’ll be watching it on catch-up, which is one of the many perks of being a member of the Group.)
Early bird tickets for Big MathsJam are only available until the end of September – if you’re going to hang out with us and do maths (with cakes, music, craft, games, etc. all available) in Milton Keynes in November, now would be an excellent time to buy your tickets. Next week, they’ll be about 11% more expensive.
I’ve never been to MathsConf, but the next one is on October 11th-12th: several friends of mine are speaking or running workshops, including Tom Briggs, Rob Eastaway and Karen Hancock.
Lastly, the annual tradition that is Mathober is almost upon us; Fractal Kitty has, as always, come up with a set of daily prompts for all of us to use as inspiration for… whatever we like, really. At least one PRE song has been written as a result.
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