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Finite Group: update and free livestream

By Peter Rowlett. Posted March 7, 2024



A few months ago a group of us launched a membership club, The Finite Group, which you can join!

A big update is the lineup — your membership now supports the work of and gives you access to content from mathematician and TikTok star Ayliean MacDonald, as well as Chalkdust’s Matthew Scroggs and The Aperiodical’s Katie Steckles and me. Membership gives you access to a chat community and monthly livestreams. For a taste of the livestreams, check out this π minute video!

The big news is that the next livestream will be free to view live online on 27th March from 5-6pm GMT. All four of us will be working through the recent ‘100 Mathematical Conventions Questions’ quiz that’s been dividing (a small subset of) the internet. The stream will be available live, and a recording will be available to members afterwards.

Announcing The Finite Group

By Peter Rowlett. Posted September 26, 2023

“Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a place where maths people could hang out and create cool maths things?” This idea was put to me a couple of years ago, and has stuck with me. It does sound nice.

Fast forward to 2023, and social media is collapsing. Some people have chosen a direction and are marching off towards Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, or a number of other platforms. Some people are trying to keep up with multiple of these, but feeling spread too thin and wondering if it’s worth the effort (ask me how I know!). But many people are taking the opportunity to step back and think again. People are rethinking whether they want to conduct their online social lives in public. There is a surge in private communities, things like WhatsApp groups, Slack channels and Discord rooms. These have the advantage that you aren’t part of the ‘engagement’-driven content push, but they have disadvantages too – you have to know the right people to get into the group.

Meanwhile, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a place where maths people could hang out and create cool maths things?

So we’re creating it. We’re calling it The Finite Group (who doesn’t love a punny maths name?). “We” is Katie Steckles, Sophie Maclean, Matthew Scroggs and me. It’s going to be a maths community that gets together to share and create cool maths things, that supports creators to do their work within the group and on the wider internet.



Mathematical Objects: Klein bottle with Matthew Scroggs

By Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett. Posted October 16, 2020



A conversation about mathematics inspired by a Klein bottle and Mathsteroids. Presented by Katie Steckles and Peter Rowlett, with special guest Matthew Scroggs.

Play Mathsteriods!





Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | RSS | List of episodes

realhats: Writing a $\LaTeX$ Package

By Matthew Scroggs. Posted March 26, 2019

A few months ago, Adam Townsend went to lunch and had a conversation. I wasn’t there, but I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Adam: Hello.
Smitha: Hello.
Adam: How are you?
Smitha: Not bad. I’ve had a funny idea, actually.
Adam: Yes?
Smitha: You know how the \hat command in LaTeΧ puts a caret above a letter?… Well I was thinking it would be funny if someone made a package that made the \hat command put a picture of an actual hat on the symbol instead?
Adam: (After a few hours of laughter.) I’ll see what my flatmate is up to this weekend…
Jeff: What on Earth are you two talking about?!


As anyone who has been anywhere near maths at a university in the last ∞ years will be able to tell you, LaTeΧ (or $\LaTeX$) is a piece of maths typesetting software. It’s a bit like a version of Word that runs in terminal and makes PDFs with really pretty equations.

By default, LaTeΧ can’t do very much, but features can easily added by importing packages: importing the graphicsx package allows you to put images in your PDF; importing geometry allows you to easily change the page margins; and importing realhats makes the \hat command put real hats above symbols.