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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

Double Maths First Thing: Issue 23

By Colin Beveridge. Posted May 7, 2025

Double Maths First Thing will sign autographs, form an orderly queue

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in mathematical practice.

Last week, the Pseudorandom Ensemble gave our first performance, A Totally Normal Song live at the Clopen Mic Night. At the moment, the video is still up and available to watch. I’m really pleased with how it went, and we’re looking forward to an in-person gig at Warwick Arts Centre in August. Once we’ve learned a few more songs, that is.

Links

I enjoyed this paper by Jacob Siehler about port-and-sweep solitaire — I thought it was neat how a relatively simple game could be modelled with some much more sophisticated maths.

On my to-read list is Perette Barella’s piece on the Collatz conjecture, which looks like it goes a bit deeper than most such pieces.

Aybüke Yılmaz has a lovely piece on square Sufic calligraphy. Also in the art world, I’ve recently come across turtlestitch, which seems like the sort of thing that would steal entire weekends from me if I allowed it to.

I’m giving a talk at my local Toastmasters group tonight, and while this article didn’t exactly tell me anything new, it’s still advice worth sharing.

And if you’re after a Terry Tao-approved challenge, you could always try to decompose 300,000! into the product of 300,000 factors, all of which are larger than 100,000. I especially like this: it’s a simple-to-state problem that would make most non-mathematicians say “why on earth would you want to do that?” but gives some people an itch they have to scratch.

Currently

This month’s Carnival of Mathematics is hosted by Karen Campe. Susan at Beauty of Mathematics is in the hot-seat next time, and you can submit your interesting maths here. (And you should email me about it. I miss a lot of cool things.)

People who are more up on this You Tube thing than I am tell me that Tibees is self-publishing a book about 4D. I’m not watching all that, but it’s exciting to people whose judgement I trust.

Speaking of videos, Grant Sanderson’s Summer of Math(s) Exposition is open again, and April’s TMiP animation challenge is over and rounded up. May’s challenge is to animate a proof of Pythagoras’s Theorem.

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