Double Maths First thing is much less effort than an advent calendar.
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician, on a mission to spread joy and delight, like a sort of Father Christmaths.
I’m sure December is a conspiracy in which Big Diary manipulates time so there are far too many places to be and far too little time to get from one to the other (the eldest currently needs to teleport from water polo to scouts.)
This week’s links
I have a difficult relationship with Quanta magazine. On one hand, it’s putting out articles about lots of great maths and computing; on the other, it insists on horrible clickbait titles, to the point that in my head it’s really called FizzBuzzFeed. In any case, here’s a piece about knots and the Menger sponge
Obviously, Matt Parker lives on YouTube, where clickbait is a survival strategy; he did a nice video about probabilities and multiple dice a while back; Dr Drang has done some more analysis.
You know what’s really good at grabbing my attention without making me sigh? A fantastic first sentence. How about:
You might think it’s unlikely for any interesting mathematics to arise from incense appreciation…
This article does exactly what it says on the incense tin. Excellent stuff.
In historical maths, Walter Van Assche has uncovered some 16th century Chebyschev polynomials, and — some years ago — Ron Doerfler has had a look at Heaviside operator calculus, which is a fantastic, unrigorous mess that just works. I strongly approve.
That’s all I’ve got this week! In the meantime, 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