Vince Vatter

The 254th Carnival of Mathematics is posted! Check out all the cool math we collated from the internet in August. @CarnivalOfMath @aperiodical.bsky.social #CarnivalOfMath #iTeachMath #MathSky #MathsToday karendcampe.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/c...

I hope the IPO gives OpenAI the resources it needs to let me pin an 11th chat.

Thurston (1982 Fields medalist), apropos of nothing.

About the game I made with @rbrignall.bsky.social gizmodo.com/this-brain-t...

I dont like AI math slop but at least I know what to do with it. But what are we going to do with correct AI proofs made by amateurs who post them publicly but lack the ability/desire to make them publishable? Will anyone else have an incentive to make the proof understandable?

www.mainstreetdailynews.com/news/krishna...

For the three-year anniversary, digit.party now shows you how your score on yesterday's board compares to everyone else! (You can also go into history and see this back to day 1001.)

Hot take: The trapezoid area formula isn’t math, it’s an algebra trick. Teach kids to cut trapezoids up instead. When are they ever going to use that formula outside math class anyway?

A pair of problems by Jay Pantone, who works in analytic combinatorics, were solved earlier: one by GPT-5 and one by GPT-5.1. GPT-5.2 Pro solved these as well. The solutions were both valid, but Jay noted that both used numerical shortcuts that he didn’t intend.

🟥🟥🟧🟧⬜ 🟥🟦🟦🟧⬜ ⬜🟦🟦🟦⬜ 🟪🟪🟫🟩🟩 🟪🟪🟪🟫🟫 day 1010: 120 points 78% digit.party

Digit Party! m.twitch.tv/videos/26561...

Digit Party just went over 1000 days! Robert Brignall and I celebrated by redesigning the whole thing. Place digits, match neighbors. 🟧🟧⬜⬜🟥 ⬜🟧🟧🟥🟪 ⬜⬜🟥🟪🟫 ⬛🟥🟫🟫🟫 ⬛⬛⬛🟫🟫 day 1001: 146 points 66% digit.party

Digit Party just went over 1000 days! Robert Brignall and I celebrated by redesigning the whole thing. Place digits, match neighbors. 🟧🟧⬜⬜🟥 ⬜🟧🟧🟥🟪 ⬜⬜🟥🟪🟫 ⬛🟥🟫🟫🟫 ⬛⬛⬛🟫🟫 day 1001: 146 points 66% digit.party

Everyone hates springing forward but loves falling back. Proposal: Abolish leap days, and redistribute those hours in the form of 6 annual "fall back" holidays. More sleep, less leap. A clear pareto improvement to our calendar.

Published today in the Notices of the AMS. Lol.

meanwhile, wikipedia is in existential crisis over whether √4 deserves its own page

Just to say how much I like the digit party game digit.party created by Robert Brignall and @vatter.bsky.social.

Of course they would choose a math major

It’s final exam season again, and I like to display a clock while proctoring. But all the web clocks google suggests suck. So I made one (okay, tbh, chatgpt made it under my supervision): digit.party/clock

I mean, it’s still better to have money than not have money right?

you'll never guess what color my daughter's squares ended up

Everyone hates springing forward but loves falling back. Proposal: Abolish leap days, and redistribute those hours in the form of 6 annual "fall back" holidays. More sleep, less leap. A clear pareto improvement to our calendar.

Logical proof that "months" are fake. Most people born in April are Aries. All Aries are born in March or April. Most people born in March or April were born in March. Therefore, most people born in April were born in March.

I asked GPT-4o to flip a coin 10,000 times. Same prompt, same parameters, but the *odds of getting Heads* took on 42 different probabilities (none below 85% btw). Obv don't use gpt-4o to flip your coins, but what the hell is going on? Here are some thoughts. towardsdatascience.com/avoidable-an...

Actually it's ok to divide by zero as long as you use the proper facilities. 🧮

the first step is admitting you have a problem. the second step is asking random users to fix it for free.

how????

Fermat thought 2^(2^n))+1 was prime after checking n=0,1,2,3,4. Euler factored the n=5 case, oops. Worse still, the odds are we'll never see another Fermat prime.