@teacherbowtie.bsky.social
190 followers 460 following 80 posts
A braggart, a rogue, a villain that fights by the book of arithmetic! https://teacherbowtie.wordpress.com
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teacherbowtie.bsky.social
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorp...

Is it this?

I remember reading something recently about how in some sports they are now added digitally to look 'wrong' from a particular camera angle, and therefore more realistic.
Anamorphosis - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
This is also the shape that an orange makes if you peel it in one piece starting at the top. (Presumably for similar reasons?)
diffgeom.com
Loxodromes, spirals on a sphere that meet each longitude at the same angle, map under stereographic projection to the double-spirals shown.

www.diffgeom.com/blogs/about-...

www.diffgeom.com/product/roll...
www.diffgeom.com/product/canv...

#MathSky #MathArt #ITeachmath
A family of randomly-chosen double spirals in a red-gold palette against a twilight gradient from light gold to deep blue, suggesting cirrus clouds at sunset.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
The red feels like the odd one out to me.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
Which gives me back your original graph.

Maybe it was right all along?
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
Here is my suggestion then:

Convert it to something parametric (not sure what).

Stretch the two x and y equations separately.

Make it cartesian again.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
I think one needs to be 0.5, and the other 2, not both the same.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
I can reason that out, but it could definitely confuse a pupil.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
It is neater, but this version doesn't feel complete to me without, for example, a justification that k(sqrt(2)-1) must be an integer. It is tacitly assumed above.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
A class did one for me an unspecified number of years ago. Such a good gift.
What I like about the Quadratic Formula is not the Quadratic Formula. Proof is not required; it's a bonus. You don't need all these big numbers, like ten.
Reposted
honeypisquared.bsky.social
Do you like maths? Do you like entertainment? Want to be entertained in a variety show about maths? Come along to the latest Clopen Mic Night and see these cool people (also me and my excellent bandmates): clopenmicnight.com/events/2025-...
Clopen Mic Night
Clopen Mic Night
clopenmicnight.com
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
And there was another page of them somewhere else in the magazine as well.
Reposted
karencampe.bsky.social
Great post about teaching in the age of LLMs /AI
Not #iTeachMath but pertinent to the question of what do we want our students to get out of the learning process.
thewalrus.ca/i-used-to-te...
I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats | The Walrus
I once believed university was a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated
thewalrus.ca
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
An excellent Howells-fest at #ChoralEvensong tonight.
Herbert Howells Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in B Minor Herbert Howells God be in My Head and P Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
Did AI discover Prosthaphaeresis?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostha...

(No, but it is very interesting nevertheless.)
sungkim.bsky.social
Language Models Use Trigonometry to Do Addition

They discover numbers are represented in these LLMs as a generalized helix, which is strongly causally implicated for the tasks of addition and subtraction, and is also causally relevant for integer division, multiplication, and modular arithmetic.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
It is Venus!

If you look North West of it, you may be able to faintly see Saturn as well.

www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/ni...

I use this website to find out what things are.

There is also a meteor shower tonight that you might be able to see some of!
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
A modern paradox of the heap! What proportion of watching a film counts as watching a film?
nkalamb.bsky.social
Netflix’s claims about how many times a given film has been viewed, it turns out, are a complete fabrication. They quite literally add up all the partial viewing time including seconds something has been autoplayed and then divide by the length of the film.

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-49/ess...
Netflix’s “views” might look impressive on paper (even Sweet Girl, the TNM starring Jason Momoa as a vengeance-seeking survivalist whose MMA-trained daughter takes up his cause, was viewed 6.7 million times in the first half of 2024), but these figures remain a sham. To get to 6.7 million, Netflix first tallies the film’s “viewing hours,” the total amount of time that users have spent streaming the movie. Here, Netflix makes no distinction between users who watch Sweet Girl all the way through, those who watch less than two minutes, and those who watch just a few seconds thanks to autoplay, or skip around, or watch at 1.5x speed. All this distracted, piecemeal activity is rolled into Sweet Girl’s total viewing hours (12.3 million at last count), which the company then divides by the program’s runtime (110 minutes, or 1.83 hours) to produce those 6.7 million views. According to Netflix’s rubric, two users who watch the first half of Sweet Girl and close their laptops equal one full “view” — as do 110 users who each watch a single minute. Such sleight of hand would be illegal in any other industry. Ford could never tell its shareholders that it sold two hundred thousand F-150 trucks over a single quarter, when in truth the company sold one hundred thousand F-150s to married couples who co-owned their vehicles. But for Netflix, a movie is an accounting trick — a tranche of pixels that allows the company to release increasingly fantastical statements about its viewership, such as the absurd notion that Leave the World Behind, a dubious Julia Roberts apocalypse movie produced by Barack and Michelle Obama, was “viewed” 121 million times. How could anyone believe that?
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
In addition to this, with music it is easy to see/hear the application.

Why should I practise scales? Listen to this Mozart concerto.

With maths, it is sometimes harder to directly point at the end goal.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
I picked up Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology for the first time ever this week, and it is full of this. The result is that I am finding it very difficult to read.

(Also the relentless classism and sexism, but that is a separate issue.)
zachweinersmith.bsky.social
Niche gripe:

I think there are a lot of people who get good at something via a combination of natural talent and grind, who then grow up to write books about how anyone can do it using a few simple tricks.

Science and math people are especially guilty of this.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
When I was at school, we used to look up the assembly hymn in the metrical index, and then pick a different set of words from everyone else.

Minutes of fun to be had.

(I have enjoyed sight-reading yours a lot - the joy is in when you suddenly recognise the tune.)
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
It is either lots or not very many is my instinct.

Some moderate number like 15 doesn't feel right.
teacherbowtie.bsky.social
Should that third instruction be 'add one more to the third number'?

It gives something a little more noteworthy then.