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Double Maths First Thing: Issue 3F

By Colin Beveridge. Posted November 19, 2025

Double Maths First Thing needs to collect its tickets, don’t let it forget.

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight of maths as far and wide as possible.

This week, I’m steeling myself up for a double whammy of a long train journey and trusting the computer shop to repair my power supply, both of which are enormously stressful.

Links

I’m not on BlueSky (I lose enough time to mathstodon, thank you very much), but some of the prolific ex-Twitterers are still doing whatever you do on BlueSky these days. Andrew Stacey has collated what he thinks is a complete collection of Catriona Agg’s geometry puzzles. Catriona is a superstar. Andrew’s a good egg, too.

In the good place, Amapanda cracks her knuckles and finds the towns furthest from a Wetherspoons. The interesting thing for me is the discussion about “what does town mean?” and “what does furthest mean?”.

Modelling sport mathematically always seems fraught with problems – the difficulty with humans is that they get all emotional and don’t follow the model – but Gabel and Redner have found that they can model “essentiall all statistical features of basketball” with a random walk model. Cool!

Need a random number and don’t have a die to hand? Jon Bentley in Programming Pearls has some ways you can code something up, assuming you’re too good for random.random().

Finally, a puzzle game: Ain’t It Funny How The Knight Moves?, a challenge to visit every square on the board that isn’t attacked by a queen.

Currently

There may be a few tickets left for Big MathsJam in Milton Keynes this weekend (November 21-23) – online attendance is available and I’m pretty sure that if you like DMFT, you’ll love MathsJam.

I’ve not yet got my hands on a copy of the new Chalkdust magazine (I’ll put that right this weekend), but on Tuesday 25th their book club will be discussing Matt Parker’s Humble Pi.

You’ll want to submit anything for the next Carnival of Maths, hosted by Tom Briggs, via the Carnival submission page.

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

Double Maths First Thing: Issue 32

By Colin Beveridge. Posted August 20, 2025

Double Maths First Thing is looking forward to the cricket

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight of doing maths, solving puzzles, and feeling really clever about it.

This week, we’re planning to take a trip to Worcester to watch a cricket match. The last time I tried that was when the 11yo was three, and it bucketed down all day. A lot of maths in cricket, you know.

Links

How many ways are there to place two knights on a chessboard so they attack each other? Susam Pal has an answer.

Some things I’ve simply never understood. For example, Why the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm works. Gregory Gundersen knows! But the other question is, why do I always think “but Hastings is a medium-sized seaside town, not a metropolis.”?

I really enjoyed Scott Sexton’s piece about applying vector calculus to topographical data to find out where it makes sense to build things.

This may not be strictly mathematical, but I found it interesting all the same: how to lay out stones in a mosaic to emphasise the edges of what you’re trying to depict.

Karen Campe has important notes on building a network of maths people, and pays tribute to her late friend Shelli. I’m sorry for her loss.

Currently

We’re a week out from TMiP! I’ve been banging on about the Pseudorandom Ensemble show for ages, but I should probably highlight that it’s also a good conference for anyone who enjoys talking maths in public. Or hanging out with the kind of people who do.

If you’ve got posts for the Carnival of Mathematics, use that link to send them my way for this month’s blog post.

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