Fiber arts and Mathematics

"Have you ever wanted to explore the symmetries of the cube and octahedron through an old Japanese art form? Or to investigate fractals using tatting and string art? Or to study the helix by knitting bed socks?" Plus magazine has a review of a book called Crafting by Concepts.

When I saw that, it reminded me of this TED talk from 2009 involving coral, crochet, and hyperbolic geometry.

And writing this post reminded me of the old favorites, Klein Bottle Hat (and Mobius Scarf!)

Henry VIII

A jolly comic!

Plush statistical distributions?

Oh yeah, here you go.

Word Problem of the Week: Unlikely Maternal Scenario

"The past is a foreign country," says the first line of The Go-Between. "They do things differently there." In the case of Gilbert Dyer's Most General School-Assistant, do they ever. On page 182, question 7, we have this amazing scenario:

• Hodge, to inherit, must marry.
• That is, he must marry a specific person.
• His first cousin.
• And gets more money the more kids she has.
• She has 24 boys.
• In 12 years.

Now, I think everyone expects algebra problems to be a bit contrived, possibly to abstract out some real life detail for the sake of the simplicity of the solution. Dyer certainly does this. But something about the little details he does include, makes me find this hilarious. Hodge is honest, Polly is pretty, and they start having kids "honestly, one Year after Marriage."

There are several questions in here that say a lot about the differences we have with those in the 18th century. The next question is about a four-day family beer party and the one after that concerns, as far as I can tell, a patent medicine seller who, for some reason, is operating at a loss.

Word Problem of the Week: Whiskey Rations Aboard Ship

There are two things I find interesting about this problem. First, the detail offered gives it a level of realism that is not typically found in these sorts of texts. On the other hand, the quantities are all represented as variables, which adds a level of abstraction. Thus, the answer gives us a formula for any possible scenario of this type. The problem is number 23 on page 479:

Word Problem of the Week(s): Classical History and Mythology

These problems come from Mathematicall Recreations, or

A Collection of many Problemes extracted out of the Ancient and Modern Philosophers, as Secrets and Experiments in Arithmatick, Geometry, Cosmographie, Horologiographie, Astronomie, Navigation, Musick, Opticks, Architecture, Staticks, Mechanicks, Chemistry, water-works, Fire-works, &c.

Basically, a seventeenth century Dangerous Book For Boys.

Several of the arithmetic questions have to do thematically with the stories of ancient Greece. These are:
Of the number of Souldiers that fought before old Troy.
Of Pythagoras his Schollers.
Of the number of Apples given amongst the Graces and the Muses.
Of the Cups of Croesus. (He gave the Temple 6 golden cups weighing a total of 600 drams, with each one a dram heavier than the next.)
Of Cupid's Apples. (The Muses steal them.)

Word Problem of the Week: Map the Ohio River

It's nice to see a little connection between geometry and geography.

From Graphic Algebra, by Andrew Wheeler Phillips and William Beebe, 1904

p. 8:

Draw a map of the Ohio River from the following latitudes and longitudes, which are reckoned from the Equator and the meridian of Washington respectively:

This is the earliest book I have seen that emphasizes graphing equations as an algebraic tool. Then, 80 years later, the graphing calculator is invented.