Double Maths First Thing is Colin’s refuge from the kids’ obsession with Odd Squad.
Hello, and welcome to Double Maths First Thing! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in my subject.
It’s half-term week, so this is necessarily rushed, brief, and poorly formatted — but it’s Big MathsJam at the weekend, so I expect to more than make up for the brevity next week.
On my list of things to contemplate on the long journey northwards:
Miles Gould has pointed me at the Capstan Equation, not to be confused with Captain Caveman. Wrapping a line around a cylinder makes it possible to hold much heavier loads than one would naively expect.
The Finite Group’s birthday livestream included Peter Rowlett talking about Carnelli, a game which involves running film titles together — the canonical example is The Empire Strikes Back To The Future. I’m enjoying subverting it (Run Lola Run Lola Run, or On the Waterfronthe Waterfront, or somehow making Zero Dark Thirty and 300 into a loop). What interesting things can you do with it?
There is a lot of discussion currently about the number of holes in a straw (which is obviously and unambiguously one). If you join the ends together to make a loop, how many holes are there now? If you sew up the top of a sock, how many holes does that contain?
If you’re going to be at Big MathsJam, I hope I’ll see you there! I’ll be talking about HyperRogue, but you risk accidental spoilers if you click through.
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.
That’s all for this week! 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 I should be aware of.
You’re about to spend the next 25 minutes watching a guy solve a sudoku. Not only that, but it’s going to be the highlight of your day.
The highlight of my day recently was coming across Phistomephel’s ring, which is a neat consequence of standard sudoku rules.
Tony Mann pointed me at another Cracking the Cryptic video with the same energy — the frustrations and feelings of stupidity that come with not having the answer yet, followed by the sheer joy of having worked out something clever.
Back to taking pleasure in maths, here’s a short interview with Talithia Williams, PhD: I loved the bit about maths appreciation, and trying to change the mindset that maths is about doing calculations to pass a test.
Another article that caught my eye this week was about climbing. Or rather, spotting an error on the climbing wall and getting it fixed. It’s interesting for several reasons, but what grabbed my attention was what I think of as x-ray vision: the power to see that something looks off, and the insistence that it be put right. That strikes me as a very mathematical thing. (And, speaking for myself, possibly an autistic thing. Drives me MAD when people don’t care about breaking the rules, I tell you.)
Thanks to September ending on a Monday, the monthly MathsJam meet-up is coming around distressingly quickly — those that meet on the traditional penultimate Tuesday will do so on September 17th. You can find your local MathsJam here — I’ll be at the Weymouth one.
Also, if you’re planning to go to Big MathsJam in November, early-bird pricing ends on Sunday.
There’s a Finite Group livestream on Friday, September 13th at 9pm BST — Katie and Ayliean are putting the ‘fun’ into ‘fundamental theorems’, it says here.
That’s all for this week! If there’s something I should know about, you can find me on Mathstodon as @icecolbeveridge, or at my personal website.
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.
Our own Katie and Peter have collaborated on a new popular maths book, along with friends of the site Alison Kiddle and Sam Hartburn, which is out today. Short Cuts: Maths is an “expert guide to mastering the numbers behind the mysteries of modern mathematics,” and includes a range of topics from infinity and imaginary numbers to mathematical modelling, logic and abstract structures. We spoke to the four authors to see how they found it writing the book and what readers can expect.
How did this project come to be?
Peter: From my point of view, Katie approached me to ask if I’d like to be involved, which was very exciting! She’d worked on a couple of books with the same publisher and was asked to commission authors for this one.
Katie: The publishers wanted to make this book – one of a ‘Short Cuts’ series which needed a maths title – and asked me to be commissioning editor, which meant I could write some of it and ask others to write the rest. I chose some people I’ve worked with before who I thought would have something interesting to say about some topics in maths (in particular, the topics I know less about, so they could help me with those bits!)
Alison: As I was the last of the four of us to come on board, I think everyone had already expressed a preference for their favourite bits to write about, but luckily that left me with the two best topics, logic and probability.
Do any of you have previous experience of working on a project like this?
Alison: I’ve been involved in writing a book before but that one was about maths education, for an audience of mainly teachers, so this was a different sort of challenge, writing for a general audience with different levels of maths prior knowledge and enthusiasm.
Sam: I’ve worked on many books in the same genre as a copyeditor and proofreader, but this was my first time as an author. I enjoyed seeing how the publishing process works from the author’s point of view – it’s definitely had an impact on my editorial work!
Peter: My first time in popular book form, though I felt it used a bunch of skills I’ve developed in other work. And Katie is so great at organising projects that it went really smoothly.
What’s the book like?
Sam: It’s a book you can dip into – you don’t need to read it from front to back. Each page is self-contained and answers a question, and we tried to make the questions as interesting as possible (two of my particular favourites are ‘Is a mountain the same as a molehill?’ and ‘Do Nicholas Cage films cause drownings?’).
Alison: We had quite a strict word limit to write to, which was a bit hard to get used to at first as I have a tendency to use ten words when two will do – but this turned out to be a blessing because it focussed us all on what the really important concepts were, and we found ways to express those concepts in a concise manner.
Katie: I love how the style of the book builds in these gorgeous illustrations – we worked with the illustrator to make sure they fit with the text, but also bring out fun aspects of the ideas we’re talking about.
Who do you think would enjoy reading this book?
Sam: I’d like to think that anyone who has a vague interest in maths would get something out of it. Even though it delves into some deep mathematical topics, we’ve (hopefully!) written it in such a way that it’s understandable to anybody with school-level maths. But I’d hope that experienced mathematicians would also be able to find something new, or at least fun, in there.
Alison: I’m definitely going to be recommending it to the students I work with. The bite-size dipping in and out model is great for them to skim read so they can find out a little bit about the mathematical ideas that appeal to them. Particularly useful for people preparing for university interviews where they want to show off that they know some maths beyond the usual curriculum!
Katie: My mum’s definitely getting a copy for Christmas – and not just because I was involved in writing it: she’s not from a mathematical background but I think she’d enjoy the straightforward explanations and discovering new ideas.
What’s your favourite bit?
Sam: The publisher did commission some lovely illustrations. The bear in the modelling cycle is a particular delight!
Katie: Yes! We love the modelling bear. I also liked being able to share ideas people might not otherwise encounter if they read about mathematics, like how mathematical modelling works, or what topology is, or some of the nitty-gritty of mathematical logic.
Peter: There are loads of quick summaries of areas of maths I know less about, which is really nice to have. The illustrations are great — the baby failing to manage a crocodile always makes me chuckle, and I can’t wait to show my son the game theory dinosaurs!
Short Cuts: Maths is available to buy today from all good bookshops.
“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.
I was interviewed by Nira Chamberlain, President of the Mathematical Association. I am the twelfth person to whom he has asked his question “what is the point of mathematics?” Hoping to offer something a little different, I spoke about teaching students the role mathematical modelling can play in sustainability.
In this series of posts, we’ll be featuring mathematical podcasts from all over the internet, by speaking to the creators of the podcast and asking them about what they do.
We spoke to… ourselves, since we run a podcast here and realised we haven’t done one of these posts about it! Katie and Peter are currently in their third season of fortnightly episodes, with plenty more to come.
