Here’s a round-up of some news from the last couple of months.
You're reading: Posts Tagged: map projections
Double Maths First Thing: Issue 5E
Double Maths First Thing is taking regular hydration breaks
[Apologies. This did not post here at the scheduled time. Mistake on my part. Won’t happen again. At least not this week.]
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the joy and delight in maths as something one does rather than (just) something one learns.
My current excitement is that the legendary Hana Ayoob is designing some Marjorie Rice-inspired decals for my elegant-but-boring guitars. Hopefully they’ll be stuck on in time for the not-yet-announced Pseudorandom Ensemble show in London in September. (Did I say that out loud? Oopsie.)
Links
First, to North America, where FIFA’s boffins have fallen victim to one of the classic blunders: the most famous is “thinking Scotland have a chance.” But only less well-known is this: “never design a tournament without involving mathematicians.” Oliver has noticed an anomaly in Group D, where Paraguay could finish third and be eliminated – ahead of Turkey, whose record might have been enough to progress. Inconceivable!
Next, to Birmingham, where Tom Briggs is hunting for maths at the Big Bang Fair.
Our third calling point is the Netherlands, where a surprising number (two!) people have analysed the railway system to determing which station is the most centra(a)l: Alejandra Ortiz Duran at Wolfram Research, and Valdemar Erk (out of curiosity). Ionica Smeets says she remembers an older paper that reached the conclusion of Zwolle, but neither of us have been able to find it – let me know if you’re better at search than either of us.
Next stop: the whole wide world, and Eugene Alvin Villar’s mesmerising display of where you get sunlight at solstice. Meanwhile, Colin Wright is trying to measure his latitude and longitude and wonders why his method isn’t doing the job.
And finally, Galway, where this section terminates: Papers have been released for Bridges 2026, which takes place in early August.
Currently
There’s a Finite Group livestream tomorrow! That’s Thursday June 25th at 5pm UK time. Ayliean and Katie are talking tilings.
Via Lucy Rycroft-Smith, there’s an IMA ECM VMT on Friday July 3rd at 12 noon UK time discussing the Leiden Declaration. Yeah, I don’t like the acronyms either, especially when three of the letters are effectively the same word. (Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, Early Career Mathematicians, Virtual Maths Tea – which I think is an online meeting.)
If you’ve got Carnival of Mathematics submissions, do send them in – Robin Whitty is collating the June/July links to post in early August.
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 35
DMFT turns around, and every now and then it falls apart
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in mathematics. I’m tutoring a bit of Further Core Pure 1 this year, and it was quite instructive to do a paper and find that I’m not immune to careless arithmetic errors or missing entire sections of a question. Oops. (It’s also reminded me that there are things I understand only at a shallow level and that means I get to do some exciting thinking soon.)
Two admin notes: firstly, my apologies to Helena Verrill, whose name I misspelt in last week’s email. I’ve corrected it on the Aperiodical version, but obviously I can’t fix an email after it goes out. Sorry, Helena!
Secondly, I mentioned a dice problem a few issues back, but forgot to mention that it’s a variant of the Ross-Littlewood paradox.
Links
We had a lunar eclipse at the weekend! Only I messed up my timings and missed totality. I did produce representations of my (very likely flawed) mental models of lunar phases and lunar eclipses.
A few months ago, I referred to a monostable tetrahedron that had been discovered both in theory, and on Colin Wright’s desk. Matt Parker has a video about it.
Speaking of the moon and of Colin, he recently shared a video of our dearly-missed mutual friend Adam Atkinson, telling the heavy boots story. I’ve certainly shared that before, but it’s always a delightful memory.
There are many pressing problems in the world. One of the most pressing is, of course, how to cut an onion into the most regular pieces possible.
Not strictly maths-related, but I was inspired by the story of Frances Oldham Kelsey on Cautionary Tales, standing up for science when it would have been politically much easier to fold.
I think we can all agree that anyone who tries to map the Earth on a 2D surface is fighting a losing battle – but at the same time, some efforts are more valiant than others. This project aims to get the areas right, at least.
As a key (and occasionally off-key) member of the Pseudorandom Ensemble, I’m a fan of pseudorandom things – such as, for instance, a method of producing pseudorandom numbers in one’s head. (Meanwhile, Kit Yates is rocking some of our merch.)
Currently
If you’re in charge of children and want to do some maths with them – and what else would you do? – Alison Kiddle and Katie Steckles’s 15 Minute Maths Shop is open for business.
The final TMiP animation challenge of the year is drawing to a close – if you want to animate something related to space-filling curves, you can share your work there.
Margaret Low, who ran a reportedly excellent workshop at TMiP, is running a free online introduction to Turtlestitch next Wednesday, September 17th. Details here.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a call for mathematical art for a common room. Deadline for proposals is December 1st.
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 2E
Double Maths First Thing might just let them watch a video
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread the love and joy of struggling with a puzzle until it finally breaks up into beautiful bits.
This week, I’ve been looking at methods for how to board a plane. Turns out there’s a lot going on there. Monte Carlo methods, Lorentzian geometry, all sorts of tasty stuff.
Links
I’m not a wordsearch fan. I feel like there’s not much puzzle there. So I was surprised when Cracking the Cryptic suggested a wordsearch was an incredible puzzle, and amazed to find I agreed. (h/t to Tony Mann.)
On the to-read list for the summer holiday is this introduction to Galois fields — I particularly enjoyed (and felt) the grumble:
Many resources assumed either:
* It’s beyond your skill level so let’s oversimplify (“it’s hard, don’t worry about it”), or
* You had prior Pure Math studies in Abstract Algebra (“it’s easy, just use jargon jargon jargon”)
As much for the acronym as anything else, I’m pleased to link to the Database of Original and Non-theoretical Uses of Topology — topological data analysis is also on my list of things I’d like to learn one day.
I enjoyed @zenorogue’s discussion of different map projections.
Also in “problems I didn’t know I needed solved”, why are piano keys the widths they are?
There are many interesting papers from the Bridges conference in Eindhoven, last week, but I think my favourite is this one: Katherine Seaton’s exploration of hitomezashi stitching patterns on an isometric grids.
Currently
A big call-out from Dr Laura Taalman — an instant follow when I realised she was on Mathstodon — for a crochet art project you can join at Granny Life Crochet.
A reminder that you should join the Finite Group if you value off-beat mathematical discussions, and get your tickets for TMiP if you want to (a) learn more about talking maths in public and (b) come to the Pseudorandom Ensemble‘s show on the Wednesday evening.
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