standupmaths

100% James Grime.

New username, who dis?

That makes me irrationally angry. I've recently filmed a video about making a rhombic dodecahedron (the greatest of all the dodecahedra) so when that comes out: post it to both subs and we'll see what happens.

I love doing the calculator unboxing videos! It was an idea that Brady had and I really ran with it. They get a super mixed reception though. A lot of people are huge fans, a lot of people get irrationally angry at them. So we have always released them sparingly as they are a bit self indulgent.

(For the uninitiated: I make videos where I unbox calculators. It is really that simple.)

I didn't want to jokes to get repetitive so we have had a bit of a break. We will do some more though. Not least because people send me calculators to unbox and they are piling up in my office.

For the general public: that being bad at math is an immutable personal trait. I want people to realise that everyone finds math difficult to some extent and the people who are 'good to math' are just those who enjoy the fact it is difficult (or put in the effort for some other reason).

For people who are slightly interested in math: misconceptions about what is 'allowed' and what happen when you break those rules.

For example (and I'm going to paraphrase a lot here with non-rigorous language): taking the square root of a negative number is 'not allowed' but if you pretend you can you get i and this leads the magical world of complex numbers. Which is all great because assuming i leads to loads of rich and consistent results.

But then I get loads of people emailing me because they have found the secret of dividing by zero, which is 'not allowed', and it is always some variation on assuming it is and giving the result a name. Which is fine. But it then does not lead to anything interesting or consistent.

Math is a game where you can make up any rules you want. But if they don't give interesting results then we discard that idea.

For professional mathematicians: that sometimes it is ok to paraphrase a lot with non-rigorous language.