Alison Kiddle

#emf2026 was magnificent. I only slightly overdid things and only had one tiny meltdown. I did a talk about maths and knitting, helped people make badges out of pie charts, helped @stecks@mathstodon.xyz do a kickass workshop about the maths of Dobble, reprised one of my favourite mathsjam talks about dodecahedra, and hung out with a bunch of cool nerds doing lovely things.

Today I'm putting the finishing touches to "The Hidden Maths of Knitting", my talk at Mathsworld in London next Tuesday (https://mathsworld.com/events/Knitting for tickets). I will be demonstrating an actual working knitting machine in my talk, as well as talking about just a few of the ways maths and knitting are intertwined. It would be great to see some Mastodon buddies there, if only so you can nag me and remind me to toot more regularly!

Hello, clever maths friends. Here is a thing I've been thinking about this morning. Most monthly mathsjams meet on the penultimate Tuesday of the month. My local mathsjam meets the following day.

Usually, this is the penultimate Wednesday of the month, but over time, how often should I expect it to actually be the last Wednesday of the month instead? And does it bunch together with lots of exceptions in a clump, or are they spaced nicely?

Candle in the bathroom. What do you notice? What do you wonder? What mathematical questions occur to you?

Recently I had occasion to pose a question "which is more likely, flipping 10 heads in a row with a normal coin or getting four sixes in a row with a normal six sided die/dice". I asked a couple of people to work it out in their heads and was interested that there are a few different approaches. How would you decide which is more likely? What calculations would you do? What do you already know without needing to calculate that you can use to help?

Sharing a Belgian Bun when the cherry is off-centre can end up a little unfair... Mathematically speaking, if we assume the bun is a cylinder and the cherry is a hemisphere, could I have found a fairer way to share it? Is it always possible to share a Belgian Bun fairly, regardless of where the cherry is placed on top?

I'm assuming both parties want equal amounts of bun and cherry.

My knitted blanket will be three times as wide as it is now, once I finish sewing it up. I wonder what fraction of the sewing I've done -is it also a third? 🤔

What do you notice?

What do you wonder?

@isleofmandan@mstdn.social haha now you've said that I can't unsee it... I'll have to light the candle again later and take another better picture!