Months ago you may have seen the new shape that does not periodically tile (repeat) like most other shapes, in the plane. However, that is assuming an infinite (x,y) plane… What if instead of that geometry, we try building out a periodic cylindrical tiling?
Continue reading “The Einstein hat does repeat periodically… on a cylinder!?”Maker Faire Vallejo, CA 2023
This year the Bay Area Maker Faire was back after years of postponement! This was an enormous fair compared to others I had attended and included some very interesting exhibits:
Continue reading “Maker Faire Vallejo, CA 2023”Ideas for the Einstein Mad Hat contest
As you may have seen from Matt Parker’s latest video, there is a new contest for the recently discovered Hat and Spectre tiles! For more details about this recent discovery please see the MoMath article about this “ein stein” (a pun for “one stone” in German).
Continue reading “Ideas for the Einstein Mad Hat contest”MakerFaire Central Oregon is coming up!
Central Oregon Maker Faire is less than a month away! This is the place to be for interesting robots, solar cars, sustainability or various interesting DIY projects.
Continue reading “MakerFaire Central Oregon is coming up!”ChatGPT is bad at math? Turns out, so is Microsoft’s assistant.
Recently it was noted, by Arstechnica and others, that ChatGPT doesn’t seem to be great at math questions – recent tests have found one can get wrong answers much more often than a calculator, and even apologize if you insist that it is wrong (suggesting it doesn’t know math after 2021… lol). but what about other similar assistants?
Continue reading “ChatGPT is bad at math? Turns out, so is Microsoft’s assistant.”de Bruijn sequence, security, and the surprising reason your phone requires pressing enter on the lock screen
de Bruijn sequences (also known as Ouroborean rings in Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, p. 44) are an interesting topic that have a surprising connection to moving across a square, and the security of most phone unlock screens. These sequences make a compact listing of all the possible values, in a repeating (cyclical) string of values.
Continue reading “de Bruijn sequence, security, and the surprising reason your phone requires pressing enter on the lock screen”SoME Math contest is back
The Summer of Math Exposition (run by 3blue1brown) contest is up and running: https://some.3b1b.co/
Continue reading “SoME Math contest is back”Belchou’s Aces – an oldie but a fun mathematical card trick!
In Mathematics Magic and Mystery by Martin Gardner, he describes a trick that was published in an earlier publication in 1939. This one is easy to set up and surprising, as you can have a friend run the whole trick with a few simple instructions, no sleight of hand! Here’s how it works:
Continue reading “Belchou’s Aces – an oldie but a fun mathematical card trick!”Computer vision and insect vision – compared
If you have been experimenting with the widely used OpenCV project, you may have found the StereoSGBM functionality that tries to find the difference between two images to find depth!
Continue reading “Computer vision and insect vision – compared”Another look at Zipf’s law, and you can chart it yourself!
In a previous post I showed some interesting facts about Zipf’s law and how many different things show a pattern of logarithmic decrease with the most popular or numerous item largely being much more so than the very rare ones – in a logarithmic pattern. Let’s look at that pattern and how you can chart it…
Continue reading “Another look at Zipf’s law, and you can chart it yourself!”