Double Maths First Thing has a suspended suspension.
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to find and spread mathematical joy, and encourage the idea that maths isn’t just endless sheets of exercises – you can sprinkle it in art, in music, in anything you enjoy and add an extra dimension.
This week, I have been lunging two-footed at meteorological assumptions and coming up with novel data visualisation ideas (what’s better than a rose diagram or a violin plot? A radial violin diagram, of course! And of course I’ve been trying to work in a “Stradivariance” joke, but no dice so far.)
Links
Immortality sounds good, right? You can achieve it by submitting an excellent candidate for OEIS’s 400,000th integer sequence. It’s expected to reach that milestone later in 2026.
Some Wikipedia games I’m not sure I’ve shared previously: Redactle, where you have to deduce what’s in an article a word at a time, and Catfishing, a “guess the article from its categories” game.
In lovely obsessive mini-project news, a redditor found themselves with time to kill at Bristol Temple Meads and went platform-hunting. Also, I liked the story of Laurence Sigler and Judith Sigler Fell’s mission to translate Liber Abaci. Fell played a bit of a blinder here, if you ask me!
Some of my favourite maths people have a new book for sale at MathsGear, home of all of your quirky mathematical needs. If you’re too cheap to buy an actual book, here’s a mathematical colouring pdf by Marshall Hampton.
A couple of long reads only tangentially related to maths: The Grim Historian on the game theory of corruption and Nicholas de Moncheaux on the underwear knowhow that went into the Apollo spacesuits.
Currently
The TMiP animation challenge is running again – June’s entries on CHECKERBOARDS are live, and the prompt for July is VECTORS. (Apparently we have to capitalise the prompts.) The TMiP podcast is also live.
“Our authority is based solely on (1) coming up with the idea and (2) making the trophies.” If you know someone who deserves an Alternative Fields Medal, nominate them here.
Anything for the upcoming Carnival? (I’ll confess to a jolt of “oh no! did I forget to do the switchover!” the other day, but fortunately it’s a double month and I had missed nothing.) Post your submissions here and Robin – who I hope is more switched on than I am – will combine them into a 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