Remote
Benjamin Leis ✅
@benleis@mathstodon.xyz
mastodon 4.7.2Systems programmer, parent, volunteer Math Circle leader and general math enthusiast. Team puzzles and #geometry Honorary Lord Semichord
Located in Seattle, WA
blog.mathoffthegrid.com
483 Followers
301 Following
18 Posts
Joined July 14, 2018
Doing some prep for next week and I'm kicking myself for not noticing what was going on here for the longest time:
Find the largest prime factor of 3^15 + 3^11 + 3^6 + 1
Ok my blog experiments continue.
I have a test version at https://benleis1.github.io/mathblog/
based on jekyll where I ported a few of my older posts and I'm fairly happy
Its markdown based, comments work and the layout looks good enough to start posting new material
Replying to
@stecks@mathstodon.xyz I just got a full backup to convert over all the old pages. I will email you when it's done
A fun number theory problem
For what positive integers is x^4 - 38x^2 + 169 prime?
https://mathoffthegrid.net/2026/05/13/parabola-tangents.html
A new post exploring the many ways to find tangents to parabolas beyond calculus.
Replying to
@feditips@mstdn.social Does it show all usages of the tag across the fediverse or just ones on the local instance?
Replying to
@zkat@toot.cat The downside is its harder to find people talking about the things you're interested in if you are already not following them. Basically you're stuck hoping you guess the right hashtag
Replying to
@nicuveo@tech.lgbt
I generally agree about discoverability. Mastodon works well if you have a network of people you're following but much less so if you want to build that network or if there is a topic you want to find out more about even with tags.
Lists which do exist will be a lot more useful in the next version when the exclusive lists are added which filter out from the main feed.
I really want binary operators for Hashtags which would make search across them much more useful ie. #math AND #puzzle
I also read but ironically can't remember where that fill text search opt in was coming.
Replying to
Replying to
@zkat@toot.cat Free text search / top posters is how I rapidly discovered who to follow for Covid, Ukraine, etc. I'm not actually sure how to replicate that here.
For a moment mathstodon was recommending people to follow on its webui but now that's gone again.
An approachable but still fun algebra warmup seen on reddit
\[ 3^x⋅ 8^{\frac{x}{x+2}} = 6 \]
Find *all* solutions for x
Do you happen to know what the best way to format polynomial division in mathjax is @christianp@mathstodon.xyz ?