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 interesting 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