#math

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A big shout-out to @gbhnews for another incredible podcast series! I'm midway through "Scratch & Win", which documents the meteoric rise of the Massachusetts State Lottery, and it's pure nerd catnip: organized crime, gambling, power, machine politics, combinatorics, computer science history! I can't believe the interviews they managed to get (and that the closing song is sung by the former state treasurer). All props to the production and editing team. Ian, Isabel, Lacy, and everyone involved should be really proud. Waiting for the inevitable HBO miniseries!

https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/scratch-win

Quote from episode 1 transcript:

The Massachusetts Lottery had already rejected nearly twenty prototypes by the time they settled on a final design -- the one with the paper flaps. Only to have John Koza, this recently graduated wiz kid with a dimpled chin and a combover, show up and tell them it was flawed. So on the spot they made …

Happy birthday to Marjorie Rice (née Jeuck, 1923–2017) who discovered 4 new pentagonal tilings of the Euclidian plane!

The San Diego mother of 5 (6th died in infancy) completed half a correspondence art course after high school & had no training as a but was always interested in & art. She began to follow SciAm writer/amateur mathematician Martin Gardner’s column, rushing to devour the magazine before her 🧵

My linocut portrait of Marjorie Rice with 4 groupings of her 4 pentagonal tiling patterns in pale orange, pink, purple and lime. Her shirt is a pattern of orange butterflies and white daisies on a dark green background. The pattern is based on the orange pentagonal tiling. She is shown in green with a background of yellow at her neckline to lime going up with lines and details overprinted in dark green. She is smiling at the viewer.

'Children’s math and reading skills have “significantly worsened” across most European Union countries, posing a huge risk to how well the bloc's future workforce can power its economy, according to a European Commission employment report.'

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-kids-arent-alright-eu-report-flags-poor-math-skills-as-a-competitiveness-risk/

I've heard conservative politicians trying to blame employees for poor productivity, but it seems that the people responsible for education are involved.

I updated my bio. I am still interested in machine learning, and I am continuing my own projects in this area, but this terminology has become synonymous with an ideology and culture to which I am diametrically opposed.

There is great value in tools like optical character recognition, speech recognition, and machine translation (when ethically applied). However, the current regime selling machine learning tools as products is completely disconnected from what I would view as a healthy and productive contribution to society.

I would still like to contribute to practical applications of mathematics in the world, and I hope that academia will continue to support my efforts to contribute in a way that supports everyone, not just a small cadre of plutocrats.

My son asked me the following yesterday:

If 5! = 5*4*3*2*1, is there a similar notation for 5+4+3+2+1 ? (aka triangular numbers, "n+1 choose 2", etc.)

It turns out that Donald Knuth proposed that this be denoted as "5?" and in analogy to the "factor-ial" he called the additive version the "term-ial".

Going the other direction, is there a notation for 5^4^3^2^1 ? (Either 5^(4^(3^(2^1))) or (((5^4)^3)^2)^1) .)

Whatever amicable numbers are they take a lot of work. More so than Brier numbers like 3316923598096294713661, 10439679896374780276373, 11615103277955704975673, 12607110588854501953787, 17855036657007596110949,
etc.

Here's something interesting for you to think about. I am working on a VR museum and science complex.

As part of this, there is a mathematically themed social meeting point called the Coxeter Cafe. It is decorated with statues of the 9 regular polyhedra and has a dome tiled with a hyperbolic tessellation because, of course - what else would we expect at the Coxeter Cafe?

Like many cafes it has windows and I am thinking about what they should look out onto ...

Whittier College is hiring an assistant professor of computer science and mathematics for Fall 2025. Applications received by November 15 will receive full consideration. This is a tenure track position! Please boost for reach.

Apply online here:

https://apply.interfolio.com/156223

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The successful candidate will lead our Interdisciplinary Computer Science program, and will be expected to teach upper-level computer science courses such as: Operating Systems, Computer Organization and Architecture, Data Structures and Algorithms, Senior Seminar; and introductory requirements for the ICS major, such as Computer Science I & II, Discrete Mathematics, and Calculus, and occasionally some service courses below the calculus level.
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