No dragons were harmed in the making of Double Maths First Thing.
Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight in numerical noodling, patterny playfulness and generally messing about with maths.
This week I’m back at my desk after a long Easter break. There are stories to write, bugs to catch and some travelling to do. On with the show!
Links
Let’s start this week with Dominika Vasilkova’s inspirational article about cardioids in coffee cups, which deserves more credit. Geometry and coffee, what’s not to like?
Something I very much don’t like (yet) is multiplying 0.333… by 0.444… without using fractions to get 0.148148…. I find it deeply disturbing. Richard Plagge explains how it works, and I would certainly not recommend using a site like Sci-Hub or note that the paper’s DOI reference was 10.2307/3026549. That would be irresponsible and probably lead to the collapse of the whole publishing industry.
Something that does use fractions is Conway’s ridiculous programming language, Fractran. Reginald Braithwaite has a nice write-up of it.
Another thing that uses fractions, but incorrectly, is Iceland’s parliamentary voting system, which assigns top-up seats per region based on the national vote. That’s a Good System in my book — unfortunately, they use the wrong formula. Unlike Geneva, which rocks.
One more troublesome fraction thing? Oh, go on then. Here’s Lior Sinai’s story of how it took almost 100 years to integrate sec(x), and how it was discovered experimentally.
Currently
There’s a Finite Group livestream next week — you should definitely join up and send them money. If you did, you’d be able to watch Scroggs and Katie talk about squares. Who better?
I can also remind you that the Pseudorandom Ensemble will be headlining — or at least going on last — at the Clopen Mic night on Thursday May 1st. The show starts at 8pm, and it’s pay-what-you-like.
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