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Double Maths First Thing: Issue 2E

By Colin Beveridge. Posted July 23, 2025

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

Double Maths First Thing: Issue 22

By Colin Beveridge. Posted April 30, 2025

Double Maths First Thing is HORRIFIED and you should be too.

Hello! My name is Colin and I am a mathematician on a mission to spread joy and delight, so obviously I’m going to start with something awful: I recently learned that a “one-year flood” is not remotely the same thing as a “365-day flood”. In fairness, they don’t usually go down to timespans that short, but it’s important for something I’m modelling. (As I understand it, a one-year flood is certain to happen in a given year. A 365-day flood has a 1/365 chance of occurring on any given day, hence occurs in a given year with probability of about 62%. I don’t like it.)

More pleasingly, I get to offer a gold star to Lew Baxter, who took up the challenge of integrating sec(x) from last time out and coded it up in Prolog. I won’t pretend to follow the code, but I’m assured it found the correct answer in considerably less than 99 years.

Links

We’re coming into the checks notes merry month of May-ing; in England, at least, that means maypole dancing. Dogs are optional, I understand. Dave Richeson has written about the maths thereof. Maypoles, not dogs. (A tip of the hat to Mair in the Finite Group).

From poles to entire planets. I was delighted by the look of the A5 geospatial system, which divides the surface of the globe into (almost) equal-area pentagons. Lovely stuff. Meanwhile, ZenoRogue has some ideas about plotting on spheres, and Matt Zucker combines my loves of truncated icosahedra and Truchet tiles

A thing of beauty: Ismail al-Jazarī’s Mechanical Devices. I certainly owned a translation of this once, but I fear I left it with an ex many years ago.

While I’m a fan of Slay the Spire, I’ve never played Magic: The Gathering. Manon Bischoff in Scientific American outlines how you can develop a Magic deck that goes infinite, but only if the twin primes conjecture is true. (Here’s the much-missed Vicky Neale talking on the subject — Closing The Gap is an excellent read.)

Currently

If you’re near a computer tomorrow night (Thursday May 1st, 8-9pm UK time), you should definitely check out the Clopen Mic Night — a pay-what-you-want variety show that, for one night only, features the Pseudorandom Ensemble. I’ll be singing a verse.

THIS Saturday (don’t get me started), which is May 3rd, Rob Eastaway is talking Shakespeare at the RI in London. That’s a 2pm kick-off, you’ll need tickets in advance.

Some conferences of interest: Bridges is in Eindhoven in July and Talking Maths in Public in in Warwick in August. I’ll definitely be at TMiP. There are rumours of a PRE gig, but I couldn’t possibly let that slip yet.

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