[HN Gopher] The Art of Mathematics in Chalk
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The Art of Mathematics in Chalk
Author : tonyjstark
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-04-24 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| varjag wrote:
| An old Soviet joke.
|
| Professor in a math class calls out a student to draw a circle on
| the blackboard. The student makes a perfect one; the Platonic
| ideal of a circle in one swift, generous motion. The professor is
| impressed and inquiries, how come?
|
| - See, all I did in my two years of military service was
| operating a meat grinder.
| grae_QED wrote:
| Even if you didn't mention it was a Soviet joke, I'd know it
| was Russian.
| tzs wrote:
| There are actually people who can quickly draw really good
| circles.
|
| Here's a video of Alexander Overwijk, who has won the World
| Freehand Circle Drawing Championship numerous times, drawing a
| circle [1].
|
| Here's Michael Clauss, who ended a streak of 9 consecutive
| Overwijk wins [2].
|
| Here's some footage of the first World Freehand Circle Drawing
| Championship in 2007, showing several different contestents
| [3].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAhfZUZiwSE
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9NgVbEhe44
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1J5ANnq0T8
| anchpop wrote:
| I don't get the joke haha, can someone explain it?
| Etheryte wrote:
| A manual meat grinder [0] is operated by running a hand crank
| that moves in a circular motion. The implication is that
| after two years of having done only this one job, the motion
| is instilled in the hand such that they can now draw perfect
| circles. The Soviet army was infamous for both its cruelty
| and the pointless repetitive errands the conscripts would
| have to do.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_grinder
| divbzero wrote:
| Reminds me of the story of Hagoromo shutting down their chalk
| business several years ago. Previous HN discussions from 2015 and
| 2019. [1] [2]
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770017 "Hagoromo
| president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business"
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237878 "The Chalk
| Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuff"
| endgame wrote:
| Hagoromo changed hands after those articles, and now runs from
| South Korea, I think. An Amazon review says it's no longer the
| Rolls Royce of chalk, but more like a "really dope Lexus".
| JNRowe wrote:
| The article mentions the chalkboards having been removed at
| Cambridge, but I recall one of the colleges having chalkboards in
| the toilets at one of the sites1. They were a curious mix of
| nerdy jokes riffing on regular toilet graffiti, jokes that felt
| stolen from Futurama, and a few apparent attempts at some actual
| work. I think the playfulness allowed them to be interesting, as
| you can place offbeat thoughts on to them without tying yourself
| to them too deeply.
|
| 1 Can't recall which one it was, but suspect they'd be a casualty
| of the past year anyway. _Edit_ : Pretty sure it was the INI.
| alphabet9000 wrote:
| if you like the look 'stuff happening on a chalkboard', you might
| like cy twombly's paintings from around 1968-70, e.g.
| http://telnet.asia/synopsis_of_a_battle.jpg
| justanothersys wrote:
| of course it's you
| enw wrote:
| I didn't read the article, but it was quite soothing to look at
| the chalkboard photos. Perhaps due to the superficial chaos and
| the order that arises from it.
| dzdt wrote:
| There is a lecture style particularly in mathematics where the
| professor writes a long derivation, proof, or calculation on the
| board while lecturing. For this style, a chalkboard works better
| than a whiteboard or any other technology I've seen.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| If you liked this, the article reminded me of a paper I read,
| "Chalk: Materials and concepts in mathematical research", by M.J.
| Barany and D. MacKenzie. It talks about various practices in math
| research.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Preprint from Barany's website: http://mbarany.com/Chalk.pdf
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| One thing that annoys me is the reasons administrators give for
| replacing chalkboards: "chalk boards are hard to maintain, the
| chalk powder gets all over the place, etc". But then they replace
| them with whiteboards that they probably spend twice as much to
| maintain. If they just spent that same effort sourcing high
| quality chalk and chalk holders, chalk boards would work great.
| lainga wrote:
| It seems some of the boards are out-of-order with respect to the
| captions. See the one on natural language - the referenced
| scribblings on hom(top) and functor existence are two pictures up
| ktpsns wrote:
| Jokes aside, I never have seen lecturers to make such beauty on
| whiteboards. There is an old religious war of blackboards vs.
| whiteboards, and somehow the whiteboard has won and lost at the
| same time.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Real mathematicians write in sand.
| sadmann1 wrote:
| What about imaginary mathematicians
| gjm11 wrote:
| Very often, yes. But the sand needs some very expensive
| preparation first.
|
| (The first step is to turn it into silicon and make large very
| high quality crystals out of it, which you slice into wafers.)
| nxpnsv wrote:
| Writing is for amateurs
| hvna wrote:
| Real mathematicians write in ancient sumerian cuneiform.
| aflag wrote:
| Real mathematicians write in book's margins.
| datameta wrote:
| Real mathematicians aren't absolute plebian luddites and
| manually flip bits in media using a scanning tunneling
| microscope and electron beam.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| I still think chalk boards are superior due to the feeling and
| aesthetics. I had a chalk board of 2qm at home but got rid of it
| after leaving uni. I have white boards in the office and at home,
| and it's still superior to the Samsung Flip we also have, but
| nothing is even close to chalk boards. Not sure why. Feels down
| to earth? You feel more connected to the medium? I'm wondering
| how much of it is nostalgia (we had chalk boards in school) and
| how some of the next generations would see it. But the pencils
| still smell funny and the black colour of the pencil on your
| hands still sucks.
|
| Now I want a chalk board again. So aesthetically pleasing, damn.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think physical stimuli is undervalued in cognition. The more
| we feel about something we like the deeper it goes.
| Reductionism is not an improvement for this part of human life.
| jstrieb wrote:
| This article really resonated with me. I'm an undergraduate math
| major, and classes being all-remote this past year have
| unfortunately reduced chalkboard use among both professors and
| students. Particularly, I have been unable to go into lecture
| halls after hours and do homework on chalkboards like I used to.
|
| I much prefer to do work standing up at a board where I can
| physically step back to get a literally different perspective on
| what I have written. The ephemerality of a chalkboard also far
| surpasses paper, which means there is less commitment for writing
| anything down - it thus feels more conducive to proper scratch
| work where ideas are tested and perhaps backtracked. Plus, as the
| article covers, there is definitely a feeling of having created
| something artistic when the problem is solved and the board is
| covered top to bottom in symbols. (Though I haven't had occasion
| to draw any interesting, abstract topology in my studies.)
|
| To make up for the lack of access to chalk boards on campus
| during the pandemic, I built one in my room, along with an
| automated system for scanning flattened images of it. It took
| about a weekend to set up, and I've used it every day since. Some
| technical details for anyone who may be curious:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26872168
| j7ake wrote:
| I'd be curious if there was a subreddit dedicated to these types
| of chalk math photos.
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