I'm a professor at UMass Lowell. I write a monthly blog called Mathematical Enchantments (mathenchant.org). Sometimes I’m facetious w/o using smileys.
Joined December 2015
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541 Photos and videos
Jun 3
To take it a step farther, consider joining the \begin{proof} community:
begin-proof.com/
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May 14
I'm delighted to report that I've been chosen to be a Radcliffe Institute Fellow for 2026-2027. I'll spend the year conducting research on tilings and completing a first draft of my book "What Can Numbers Be?". radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-a…
ALT A tiling of a plane region using trihex tiles.
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Apr 18
In this month's Mathematical Enchantment, a math-and-science writer named Jim Propp, inhabiting a variant of the fictional Project Hail Mary universe, confesses to his pivotal role in the impending end of all life on Earth, and kind-of sort-of apologizes. mathenchant.wordpress.com/20…
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Apr 19
The first half is a mathematically correct discussion of models of growth (exponential vs. logistic) in a fictional context. The second half uses the same scenario to show that sometimes there are more important things than being mathematically correct.
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Mar 12
Learn how a stupid question led to an interesting, albeit spectacularly useless, way to estimate pi by tossing a coin many, many times, in this month's Mathematical Enchantments essay, "In Praise of Stupid Questions". mathenchant.wordpress.com/20…
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21 Nov 2025
Writing in The New Yorker earlier this month, Stephen Witt said matrix multiplication is ugly. Is he right? Check out my take at mathenchant.wordpress.com/20…
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4 Nov 2025
This just opened near me, and not a moment too soon. I really could use a few extra terabytes of RAM between my ears.
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4 Nov 2025
It’s used by X-ray technicians to take an X-ray that shows your fingers individually from the side, as you rest your hand on it with your fingers splayed. I doubt that this polytope has been studied, but it is definitely chiral in both the mathematical and etymology senses.
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18 Oct 2025
This month in Mathematical Enchantments: An 87-year-old fractal wanted to be seen and understood. I figured it could use some help. mathenchant.wordpress.com/20…
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8 Sep 2025
A triple negative in the headlines today: “Court lifts immigration stop limits”
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24 Aug 2025
Have you ever seen balls ricochet down a network and land in bins to create not the usual bell-shaped curve but a curve with two humps or more? Soon you'll be able to at MoMath. mathenchant.wordpress.com/20…
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20 Aug 2025
What? No “Decolonize Catan” bumper stickers for sale? Shame on you, Internet!
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7 Aug 2025
I’m disappointed to learn that “hypergamy” refers to nothing more interesting than what used to be called “gold-digging”. I was hoping it referred to something more genuinely mind-bending, like being married to uncountably many people along uncountably many timelines.
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7 Aug 2025
There’s a pattern in the original Star Trek series: when a bad character is vanquished, they die or leave repeating some phrase over and over (the friendly angel, Apollo, Tralayne, Charlie X, Nomad, Redjac, …). Has anyone catalogued them, because that’s what the Internet is for?
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7 Aug 2025
I just found a few at en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Last… but that list is far from complete.
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23 Jul 2025
I want to support public media in underserved areas of the U.S. Is there a fund that will spend my donation where it will do the most good? nytimes.com/2025/07/16/opini…
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