Two circles surrounding a squareWas more than the poor thing could bearIt made itself fetal‘Til planar was hedralCylindrical nets are a snare! Isometry! Great celebration!But tragedy followed elation,When off of the gridThe image got slid.The pre-image, lost in translation. A circle can hardly affordTo argue with segments, good Lord!When a disc meets a lineIt is…
Month: March 2017
A trio of math limericks
Inspired by Math with Bad Drawings, here a trio of my own limerick creations: Two circles surrounding a square Was more than the poor thing could bear. It made itself fetal ‘Til planar was hedral. Cylindrical nets are a snare! Isometry! Great celebration! But tragedy followed elation, When off of the grid The image got…
The Color of Strawberries and the Curse of Knowledge
A recent meme asks: What color are the strawberries? Most people will see the strawberries as being red even though there is no “red” pixel in the image. Our minds fill in the red because of our experience with strawberries, and because we can tell the entire image has a blue filter. There is an…
Transformations as Functions
Most high school geometry textbooks will say that there are four basic transformations. Three of these (translations, reflections, and rotations) are rigid transformations; the resulting copy (image) is congruent to the original version (pre-image). Here are examples (blue is the pre-image): The first example is a simple translation, which can be written algebraically…
Liberal Men and Blurred Lines
I remember Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and the months leading up to it. I remember him saying emphatically, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” Even when he admitted to having had sexual relations with a subordinate in a workplace provided by taxpayers, he claimed it was a “private” matter. And the…
Uniting Against Milo: How to Practice Empathy Across the Political Spectrum
February began with University of California Berkeley canceling a planned lecture by controversial alt-Right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos following violent protests opposed to his appearance. Conservatives referred to the decision as censorship by “leftist cowards” organizing a “liberal lynch mob.” Some accused UC-Berkeley itself of censorship, even though the decision was motived by public safety, not opposition to Yiannopoulos’s…