Joseph Nebus @nebusj@mathstodon.xyz

I did reach the letter M! For the A-to-Z this year I wrote about the Mobius Strip:

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/09/09/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-mbius-strip/

Also, it features more roller coaster pictures than any other mathematics blog post I've written yet.

My wife hoped that for the letter L I would explain "Leibniz, the Inventor of Calculus". I could not in good conscience say 'the', but I could say other things too.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-leibniz/

Rabbit, rabbit.

Can I explain K-Theory in two thousand words? No, no I can not. But in the eleventh of my A-to-Z essays for the year I at least try to say why it's worth trying.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/08/26/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-k-theory/

In the comics today: 'Why Euclid Had No Friends'.

https://www.gocomics.com/bliss/2020/08/26

LB: Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, besides everything else, is the venue for one of Michigan's competitive pinball leagues. If the place survives --- you can help at https://www.gofundme.com/f/marvins-marvelous-mechanical-museum --- and it reopens please come and try it out! Absolutely no pinball experience needed. Just coins for the machines.

League is usually the first Friday of the month at 7 pm but check before making a long drive.

In the meanwhile I'm reading James Tomayko's _Computers In Spaceflight: The NASA Experience_ and am entertained by all the trouble NASA had in the 60s understanding just what it wanted from the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory programmers, but also that the best way to get MIT in line was threatening their self-esteem.

(This would not have worked with my grad school, RPI, because we've never had self-esteem.)

And it turns out they can't view it anyway because apparently the Support Chat people aren't allowed to see videos at work.

This is now my *third* attempt at getting a Switch which won't connect to Wi-Fi and won't pair with its joycons fixed, part of a saga which has gone on since the middle of June.

Sorry to bother folks; this seems the easiest way to get a video of a Switch not pairing with its joy cons to someone who needs to see it. Please don't worry about it.

The tenth of the A-to-Z this year? Jacobi polynomials. I was thinking to just get every function ever covered in one article.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/08/19/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-jacobi-polynomials/

I'm also interested in topic suggestions for the M, N, and O letters, for a couple weeks on.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/08/18/im-looking-for-m-n-and-o-topics-for-the-all-2020-a-to-z/

The ninth of my A-to-Z topics this year was Imaginary Numbers. Yes, I found the Peanuts strip where Sally Brown imagines "overly-eight".

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/08/13/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-imaginary-numbers/

Also the one where that plush tiger has some suggestions.

For the eighth of this year's A-to-Z essays I wrote about Hilbert's Problems, and about a question adjacent to David Hilbert's famous list.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/08/06/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-hilberts-problems/

Rabbit, rabbit.

I had another biographical note f or the seventh of my A to Z this year: J Willard Gibbs.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/07/30/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-j-willard-gibbs/

The sixth of my A-to-Z topics was Fibonacci. One of my readers hoped to learn a bit about Leonardo of Pisa's biography. This brought me to some amazing discoveries about Fibonacci's biography, and I share it here ...

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/07/23/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-fibonacci/

Spent an hour near the university observatory, hoping the clouds would part enough that we might see the comet. No luck.

We *did* manage to see an Eastern cottontail rabbit that spent nearly the whole hour watching a tree and grazing. So the evening wasn't a total wash.

Also I'm looking for topics to discuss for the letters G, H, and I yet.

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/07/12/im-looking-for-g-h-and-i-topics-for-the-all-2020-a-to-z/

For my fifth A-to-Z topic, I got the suggestion of Exponential. I used the chance to work out a reason behind something we've gotten used to: why is the exponential of an imaginary number on the unit circle?

https://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/2020/07/16/my-all-2020-mathematics-a-to-z-exponential/