This is Whale Rider erasure
Associate professor of mathematics. Hymn aficionado. Large absent-minded spirit. Resist simple narratives. Cultivate an abolitionist imagination.
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This is Whale Rider erasure
Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):
Ceci n’est pas un Picasso
Academia is a very special kind of hell, and Kuang clearly understands it. In her innovative new novel, a magical professor dies in a lab accident and two students descend into hell to find him.
This is basically the plot of the Doctor Who episode “Army of Ghosts.”
Now that I’ve seen the “thumb first, index second” method, I think I’ll start teaching it as an alternative! It feels different, and I’m not yet sure which I prefer.
*shows
Yes, the diagram show how I learned it and how I teach it. Some folks curl their fingers from a towards b and then stick their thumb out for axb. I also illustrate the Frenet frame with my index finger as the tangent and my middle finger as the normal.
The conjecture that every convex polyhedron is Rupert is settled in the negative! The convex body in the image cannot pass straight through a hole inside itself. arxiv.org/abs/2508.18475 #Mathematics #Geometry #MathSky
just need everyone to know that @jklabs.net made a website where you can make your very own "this is not a _____" graphic playing with it is honestly VERY fun thisisnot.tinyserver.club
Forget how many total browser tabs I have open; just the number of arXiv and Overleaf tabs that are open is becoming unmanageable.
I had a student in analysis who went completely the wrong direction on a proof because of interpreting $\overline{X}$ as the complement of $X$ instead of its closure, because $\overline{X}$ was being used for the complement in her combinatorics class.
My drawn statement on Ai as standalone from my now finished minicomic as syllabus for new liberal studies class! As promised this is shareable, printable - all from my site, feel free to make use of it, cite me & let me know how it’s received. Share away all here! spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...
Come work with my fantastic colleagues! We have a job opening for someone in any area of operations research with a broad teaching porfolio. See the ad: math.hmc.edu/tenure-track...
Thanks. Symptoms are mild, but irritating.
Well, catching Covid is certainly one way to end the first week of classes.
My first expository paper, building on lecture notes from the minicourse I gave at the 2023 Riverside Workshop on Geometric Group Theory.
Hang on this is just Katabasis again
Like this?
We were just debating whether to teach 7yo about polynomial division so she understands long division when they get to it in school.
In order of appearance.
This is Pungo. He is glad you found a new favorite hobby, but please don't forget about his favorite hobby. 13/10 (IG: ksmith.clay)
Just going to say that there is no need to exceptionalize immigrant jails because every US jail and prison is like this. All of them without exception.
once again "ai" is just many underpaid overseas contractors in a trenchcoat and every once in a while sam altman pretends to be scared of its awesome power in order to drum up more funding
my statement on Ai from the mini-comic I'm making as syllabus for a new class I'm teaching this fall. It's simple, but I pretty much said all I have to say on it - it robs you of decisions and struggle - and the joy of being surprised. It robs you of learning...
Tonight at pizza night we sang old Sesame Street songs. Community joy is life.
I don’t know how long it’s been running, but Cornell has a “Tell Grads It’s Friday” event with cheap beer, popcorn, and chips and salsa.
What’s your favorite album by a solo classical artist?
I made a silly thing for my office.
REAL ANALYSIS IS A *SCAM* (not really, but hear me out) (I made this video specifically for @rhymeswithspecimen.bsky.social 's amusement). youtu.be/43uBS5BJ4Gg?...
These cards were distributed at daughter’s LAUSD school this morning for the first day of class. I think I’ll post this one on my office door.
😉
I made a silly thing for my office.
New at Grading For Growth: A look at the connection between deliberate practice and alternative grading. The connection is closer than you think, and there's a lot to unpack. gradingforgrowth.com/p/alternativ...
Um yah yah :-)
I taught at Smith for three years as a visiting assistant professor.
What’s your favorite album by a solo classical artist?
I’ve been listening to Audra McDonald’s album “Way Back to Paradise” during my commutes this week. It’s as good as I remember and then some.
My answers are hopelessly shaped by my experiences living in college towns: Northfield, MN Ithaca, NY Northampton, MA Oxford, England Toulouse, France
I especially like this observation: “The dream of a digital tutor is it gives you precisely what you need to learn at a given moment. I don’t believe in “precisely.” I think there are a lot of things you’re ready to learn at any given time, & beyond a point it doesn’t really matter what you study.”
Wrote a post about pedagogy for all the math freaks out there. pershmail.substack.com/p/practice-s...
Zyliss rotary cheese grater. We have it; we love it. zyliss.com/collections/...
Went to Solvang for a family vacation this week. Visited Lulu the Troll, a new installation by Danish artist Thomas Dambo at the California Nature Art Museum. Impressive, and made from recycled and discarded materials!
Went to Solvang for a family vacation this week. Visited Lulu the Troll, a new installation by Danish artist Thomas Dambo at the California Nature Art Museum. Impressive, and made from recycled and discarded materials!
Now I realize why the new version is counting three b’s in blueberry instead of two: the previous version got excoriated for counting two r’s in strawberry instead of three, and the system overcorrected (i.e., it read the internet as saying “if you think there’s 2 of something, there’s actually 3”).
We have to remember that the 12-hour, roman numeral analog clock is not universal. For example, Japanese is written top-to-bottom, right-to-left, and uses kanji, so their clock looks like this.
Here we go again. Because it needs to be said: Don't use ChatGPT to dunk on ChatGPT. Make it none of your fucking business. Don't run some prompts up laugh at it or check out the new model. Do not give them air. Suffocate it out of viability. Do not use ChatGPT.
What a surprise to see a quilt I sewed twenty years ago show up here in my newsfeed.
Hey kids, was Rolf your favorite character in The Sound of Music?
Galois [mathematical reverie broken as he is handed a pistol at dawn]: Wait. What? No — I said dual!
Hi everyone, I wrote a thing! It was harder than any research article I've ever written. 😅 #MathSky
Haven’t read the piece, but the answer is Golden.
Since its syllabus writing time, what are our favorite articles about the issues with things like ChatGPT? (Ethical, environmental, brain rot etc)
My philosophy and experience with students is that they can almost always do incredibly difficult work, but if you ever waste their time with soul-killing meaningless work, you have essentially poisoned the well when it comes to getting them to spend any additional effort on your class.
Standing up for the smallest of minorities is important because when you accept the premise that one group are expendable because small or ‘insignificant’, you have accepted the idea of the expendability of human life in general, and the enemy will use your acquiescence to pick off yet more.
And here is the same video but on YouTube: youtube.com/shorts/6D4wg...
A sketch of the graph of a hyperbolic paraboloid 🤩 (z = x^2 - y^2)
Thank you for making it! I’m looking forward to adding it to my office.
Got my print of the Alexander Horned Sphere illustrated by @acidlich.bsky.social!
Has anyone told @darthbluesky.bsky.social?
Went to see Superman with @hannahnpbowman.com, daughter, and father-in-law. Big two hours of fun. Earnest story with plenty of silliness. For parents: some parts were a little scary for 7yo, but by the end of the movie she was glad to have seen it.
Frog and Toad looked into a mirror. “We look brave,” said Frog. “Yes, but are we?” asked Toad.
Kreitzer and Sweet-Cushman have a great summary of the research here. I am not joking in the least when I say it's easier to detect instructor gender than teaching or learning in evals. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
You can tell a lot about someone from their taste in music. For example, what kind of music they like to listen to
The predictions were scary for a few hours there, and it wasn’t clear what the news would be when we woke up.
Grateful that last night‘s tsunami appears to have passed with minimal damage.
I was taught that children are innocent and should never be harmed. Hadn't expected this to become an extreme position in my lifetime. (Trans children have a right to medical care, just like all other children; either statement is extreme in the USA).
"We can honor God’s identification with those who are criminalized and imprisoned when we commit ourselves to abolition." sojo.net/articles/wha...
see here 👇
Which is to say, our family enjoyed it. :-)
My daughter has most of the soundtrack memorized already.
OEIS A297497: Triangle T(n,k) (n>=0, 0<=k<=n): use T(n,k)=T(n,k-1)+T(n-1,k-1) rule except left edge is the sequence read by rows, initial values are T(0,0)=0, T(1,0)=1. oeis.org/A297497
Just called @repbradsherman.bsky.social’s office about ongoing atrocities in Gaza. A long-overdue shift is happening in the U.S., and as co-chair of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, he should both acknowledge that shift and stand for those who oppose committing those atrocities in their name.
JWST image pointed neat the galactic center. Taken in near and mid infrared light as part of camera calibration and checkout. flic.kr/p/2nAJYP4
This piece, by @mrrablin.bsky.social, is a really useful critique of Feldman's Equitable Grading model. It addresses the key concerns that folks who are both pro- and anti-grading reform have with the model and, importantly, provides some useful solutions. www.tylerrablin.com/blog/the-ban...
My 8-year-old made their own version of the game Life, and it's way more accurate than the original. The path is convoluted. The rules change on a whim (but always in favor of the game's creator). The real estate is outlandishly expensive. The jobs pay either $9K or $999,999K. The goal is unclear.
This week: Part 2 of how I use standards-based *and* specifications grading together in the same class. This time I talk about things I don't grade, final grades, and reflections.
You always have and always will.
I love stuff like this
Have reduced the number of exam tasks for multivariable calculus from 30 to 25, mainly to make space for reintroducing modeling task group projects. Feeling positive about this change. For one thing, no single exam will have more than 7 tasks!
Day 8 of posting a cow tools edit every day unless I don't
This is what my daughter (7yo) said.
Her phalanges are disproportionate to her metacarpals and the longer I look at it the more it gives me subliminal uncanny valley horror, which is exactly what you want from a fashion spread
It’s like AI image generators are trying to train us out of recognizing the aliens when they invade and start wearing human skin.
I love the duel in The Princess Bride, but the greatness of this fight from The Court Jester should not be forgotten.
Great thread on the non-neutrality of science, technology, and mathematics. For more on this, go read some Melvin Kranzberg, @merbroussard.bsky.social, @histoftech.bsky.social , and issues of The Journal of @4sweb.bsky.social, @sthv.bsky.social, Techné, and more at your local library, today! :D
I keep catching strays from "technology is neutral" people, so let's set things straight. 1) Technology is not neutral, especially the subset of technology called "algorithms" 2) The form-factor that makes a technology into a tool is not neutral 3) How tools are productized is not neutral [rant]
Up on the education blog, I answer a question about how to get into reading research as a non-researcher. pershmail.substack.com/p/help-i-wan...
Nice work! Now I find myself wondering if there's a similar nice way to store Hilbert curves using binary (or ternary?) sequences: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert...
NEW: Questions in Dataviz: What is a Hitomezashi Snowflake? questionsindataviz.com/2025/07/25/w... Inspired by @mathskath.bsky.social - looking at encoding data as hitomezashi stitching (steganocoding) and creating digital equivalents, before diving into the mathematics of snowflakes.
Here's a project that I'm really proud of that we've been working on for a long time: The Abolition Lectionary is available now as a (e or print-on-demand) book: christiansforabolition.org/2025/07/25/t... ⚓
Saving this for the last day of vacation.
Do you just sing it to your kids in the car then?
That was another excellent episode of Mr. Wizard.
I was in high school in the early 90s. I went to the mall with my friends, but not to go clothes shopping, usually just to the food court, video arcade, and walking around to hang out. Clothes came from Christmas and start of school year. When I did shop, it was usually with my mom, usually Target.
For distribution in the southern U.S., Saja Boys had to change “Soda Pop” to “Coke or Pepsi.”
Our family are now the proud owners of the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack.
Unfortunately, at my institution at least, some majors are required to take multivariable calculus but not linear algebra, so we can’t make that switch.