I’ve never quite understood the idiom, ‘life throws you a curveball’. You’d think that with my love of math as well as my love of baseball this would be a pretty clear statement, and yah yah sure I think we can all agree that if you’re metaphorically thrown a curveball, that generally means...
Do you know about spacetime? I didn’t till recently. And I’m not usually into things like ‘space exploration’ – it gets me as fussy and uncomfortable as the phrase ‘deep-sea diving’. I’m a researcher, not an explorer, and I don’t have any interest physically going to places which other human beings...
I had to get out. Which isn’t my M.O.. I’ll stay home for days at a time, feeling quite content reading & writing during the day and watching mindless tv in the eve. It’s friggin’ ideal. Today is one of those days where there’s a super-fresh sun-soaked breeze blowing through the open windows and...
I love hearing new ideas. I love those moments when I’m in a group environment and someone says something that makes me - and you, and everyone else in the room - just P A U S E and replay the words in my head over and over. Much more often than not
Admittedly, I am a big - way way way WAY Big - stickler for people understanding the exact definition of the words that they use to communicate with. I don’t know if this means that I simply have a deep appreciation and respect for the English language or if it just means...
This essay is not about the multi-centuries of history of the entity known as zero; others have written whole scores of essays and books about ye ol' zero, so, yeah no, that's not what will be revealed here. This essay is about the power of nothing...
Dear Diary, Why hasn’t anyone noticed my transformation? Isn’t it obvious? It sure feels that way to me. I said I was going to pull myself together and move in a new direction and ...
You know what’s confused me for a really long time? Whether standing out from the crowd is a good thing or a bad thing. Or, to make that sentence not so extreme by my use of such polar opposite words that offer no gray area in between to contemplate - let me give you an example...
I hadn’t realized how emotionally isolated I was in my relationship with mathematics till the physical limitations of 2020 were imposed on the world. I hadn’t realized how strong my feelings of adulation were for math till there were severe limits placed on ...
Let's begin with this excellent definition of what a logarithm is: Logarithms are mathematical relationships used to compare things that can vary dramatically in scale. I find that the clearest way to explain what a logarithm is to first say what its relationship is to an exponent, because...
I think it’s kind of weird that I didn’t have the whole world of fractals in a bear-hug of an embrace till I was…oh…probably in my 30’s? I guess I just had never stumbled upon them and didn’t know that the genesis, definitively, of a fractal is alls about the maths. I’m sure I had seen them and...
In the living room of the house I grew up in, there was a big ol’ grandfather clock that my mom picked up at a garage sale and, with the help of one of my brothers, restored back to working condition. When it was oh-so-quiet in the room and I’d be curled up in my chair reading...
I’m going to tell you about one of those words that has a definition that can be ever-so-slightly different depending on not just the context of how it’s being used, or what part of speech is assigned to it (Sometimes it’s a noun! Sometimes it’s an adjective!) but its definition can also be...
Who doesn’t like harmony? Like, are there people out there who hear something quantifiably harmonic and they make a face like they just bit into something gross? Is there anyone here who has a misophonia for harmony? Well, I love it, in all the environments and disciplines where it can exist. I...
I want to go back to the basics, to one of the fundamental participants in all mathematical calculations. When I say I love math, most folx presume that means I love arithmetic, which is not quite true. I mean, I definitely get some satisfaction when...
You know how people say, “because, science” in response to a question that is about anything from why diseases spread, to how diamonds are made, to why some bird migrations land in the same backyard, year after year? And while we should always...
My favorite word is GO. You can proclaim it like a battle charge as you wage into a space that you’d rather not be in yet you have to be in so let’s get it over with. You can also whisper it to yourself, that final assertion that, hey, stud, you got this. There’s probably a legit million ways you...
I am fond of saying, “Equilibrium. That’s all that we want. That’s all any of us want, really.” And if I’m compelled to say this phrase, then that usually means it feels appropriate to say it in a dramatic way; I pause between each sentence. I might gesticulate (not wildly). I might even throw in...