Perusal of the Subcategories

While I try to keep this blog as formless as possible, my ideas seem to fall into some natural flavours, which I have displayed below:

3 Levels

I am hopeful that this subcategory can both improve my ability to convey mathematical concepts to three different background levels (similar to the 5 Levels video series by WIRED), and also provide the general public (or a subset thereof) with new perspectives on the mathematical world that is typically discarded as inaccessible. The three levels to which I will try to aim my writing at are 1. the general public with little or no mathematical background (“Over lunch”), 2. the less general public with a bit of mathematical background, but plenty of mathematical interest (“On the bus”), 3. my peers (“In the lounge”).

Can’t see the forest for the symmetries

When a subject like group theory is presented to the general public, the examples used (e.g., symmetries of shapes) always seem to give this impression that group theory is a “fun toy” mathematicians play with, rather than something actually quite serious and useful.

Forced off the fence

The mathematical techniques called “forcing” describe methods that insist mathematical statements that cannot be proven nor disproven actually make a decision about being true or not.

Yes, no, maybe so

If you open one of my blogs, you’ll either read it, or you won’t… right? Or is there some sort of alternative that isn’t quite “reading” but also isn’t quite “not reading” either?

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Non-mathematical soapbox

I can’t imagine this being used too extensively, but posts here will have little (if any) mathematical content to them. I’ll record here thoughts and perspectives I might have (that I feel are worth sharing) as a student of mathematics.

All in your head

We have cars so we no longer have to walk, and now we walk for leisure. We have calculators so we no longer have to compute by hand, and now..?

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Storytelling

This is a relatively new subcategory, and I’m not entirely certain what the level of audience is. The goal is to provide a (mostly) self-contained development of some mathematical idea. These are a lot of work to write, so we’ll see if this subcategory gets annihilated or absorbed by another subcategory in the future.

How far along the tangent have we gone?

Continuing off the tangent from the last story, it’s important to make sure you keep yourself oriented so that you can track how far off-topic you take yourself with your thoughts.

Off on a Tangent

Writer’s block for “3 levels” led me to shoot off on a tangent and try a completely different kind of blog… so wouldn’t it be appropriate to have it be dedicated to tangents?

Co-learning

Just as duality is a powerful concept in mathematics, one of the best ways of solidifying understanding of something is to explain it to someone else. Things written here will contain at least one thing I wasn’t comfortable with, with the intention of trying to get myself to organise my understanding.

Spaces: am I missing the point?

What’s the most important part of a space: the points, or the neighbourhoods of points? If you’re sober, maybe it doesn’t matter.

How have I gone this long without talking about monads?

Did you know that reading is a monad? It’s because reading is free, and free things are generally monads. What does this even mean? Well, you won’t find out by reading this blog, that’s for sure…

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Mathematical musing

If I think of (or find) a connection or insight of some kind that I think is really interesting and worth sharing, you might find some form of it here—I can’t always burden my friends with listening to my extemporaneous mathematical ramblings!

Swindled by infinity

What is the “infinite”th (?) term of the following sequence: a, b, a, b, a, b, …? Would it be “a” or “b”? How about the “infinite”th term of the sequence a, a, a, a, a, a, …? Would it be “a”?

An odd thing about super-enrichment

Don’t get too excited about the word “super” in mathematics. Perhaps you also shouldn’t get too excited by this blog’s title. Imagine if Superman were just a man with a Z/2-grading.

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