Mathematicians celebrate Valentine’s Day with more unbridled abandon than any group I’ve ever seen. Kindergartners get the silver, for liking the day of hearts, but, hands down, mathematicians take the gold.
I’m gathering just a fraction of the posts I saw coming out of the math community this past February 14. Images started popping up early in the week in anticipation of the big day. Luke Walsh and and Iva Salley were the early birds. Iva with her heart shaped number puzzle…
and Luke with a number of images, some static, some dynamic. Here’s a link, which if you follow it, and scroll down, there’s more:
The end of Valentines Day was bracketed by late day contributions by Suzanne von Oy and Martin Holtham.
Martin’s young daughter even joined in:
Dan Anderson made this lovely series of translucent hearts that create patterns with each other
Then there’s this one, that I started but that Dan helped me out with:
Phil DeOrsey made this heart that looks like it doesn’t know if it’s coming or going, in response to a challenge by Daniel Shiffman
Mark Kaercher added some origami to the mix
Ed Southhall seized the opportunity to educate us:
Ben Orlin schooled us on how to obliquely sweet-talk our sweeties:
Grant Sanderson wrote a poem and made a video
The National Museum of Mathematics sent out a craft to its mailing list, which people shared.
The New York Times publish a math-heart article, which was shared widely
And if all this isn’t enough, Vincent Pantaloni is doing his own collection, spanning over at least a couple of years, of images he’s harvested from twitter
Colleen Young linked to a collection of heart-themed activities, which includes a couple of Numberphile video that shows heart shape made with a marvelous, unexpected twist.
There’s many more Valentine references in this math community that I could possibly list and still get to sleep tonight. Feel free to add more in the comments.
Now here’s my contribution to the day, a stop-motion crayon on newspaper drawing/construction:
Hope you all feel the love!
Happy Valentine’s Week.
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