Category Archives: links

Happy tau day!

Posted on June 28, 2021 by Brent

Happy Tau Day! The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl is now available in print, if you’re in the market for a particularly nerdy coffee table book and conversation starter: I also wrote about Tau Day ten years ago; see that … Continue reading →

Posted in famous numbers, links | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

More on sums of palindromes

Posted on April 11, 2018 by Brent

In my previous post I reported on a recent proof that every positive integer can be written as the sum of three palindromes. The first thing to report in this follow-up post is that Lewis Baxter sent me the Python … Continue reading →

Posted in arithmetic, computation, links | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Every positive integer is a sum of three palindromes

Posted on April 9, 2018 by Brent

I recently learned from John Cook about a new paper by Javier Cilleruelo, Florian Luca, and Lewis Baxter proving that every positive integer can be written as a sum of three palindromes. A palindrome is a number that is the … Continue reading →

Posted in arithmetic, computation, links | Tagged , , , , , | 14 Comments

Curvahedra

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Brent

Everyone should go check out this Kickstarter project for CURVAHEDRA, a sort of construction kit that lets you build beautiful stuff like this: So cool! You can read more about the math behind them here. These are designed by Edmund … Continue reading →

Posted in geometry, links | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Curvahedra

Network reliability

Posted on February 22, 2016 by Brent

Over on my other blog I’ve started writing about an interesting but apparently nontrivial problem, which some readers of this blog may find interesting as well. Suppose you have a network of computers with some one-directional wires between them. Each … Continue reading →

Posted in links, probability | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Link: Chat Noir

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Brent

Just a link for you today: Chat Noir is a fun game where you try to trap a cat before it escapes. It’s quite mathematical, too. Can you figure out strategies for trapping the cat? Can you always win, or … Continue reading →

Posted in games, geometry, links | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Cosmic Call at The Universe of Discourse

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Brent

I’ve really been enjoying a series of posts by Mark Dominus on his blog, The Universe of Discourse. The Cosmic Call was a series of radio messages sent in 1999 and 2003 aimed at various nearby stars (in case there … Continue reading →

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Straightedge and compass construction challenges

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Brent

I haven’t written here in quite a while—I’ve switched into “work on research for my dissertation really hard so that I can actually graduate” mode, and with a 21-month old in the mix that leaves very little time for blogging. … Continue reading →

Posted in challenges, games, geometry, links, meta | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Diagrams!

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Brent

Over the past few years I’ve written quite a few posts with images generated by a library I (now along with many others) wrote. Most famously, this is how I created those factorization diagrams. But I’ve used it in many … Continue reading →

Posted in links, pictures, programming | Tagged , | 1 Comment

New “Chaos” videos from the makers of “Dimensions”

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Brent

I just got an email from Jos Leys, one of the creators of the Dimensions video series (which I wrote about previously), announcing that they have released another video series, this time about Chaos, at http://www.chaos-math.org/en. I haven’t had a … Continue reading →

Posted in links, video | Tagged , | 6 Comments