Science and Inquiry discussion

For February 2025 we will be reading Love Triangle: How Trigonometry Shapes the World by Matt Parker.

Please use this thread to post questions, comments, or reviews, at any time.

I have started this one. Going a bit slow, just really busy at work. I liked the part about triangle mesh and it's applications in things like 3D printing and engineering. The story about the author's engineering friend who designed a UFO shaped bar with triangles was memorable.

Starting it today.

Ah, aPriL, you're so diligent about reading most of the group selections and posting about them. I really admire that. And appreciate it. I can't manage it myself.

Betsy wrote: "Ah, aPriL, you're so diligent about reading most of the group selections and posting about them. I really admire that. And appreciate it. I can't manage it myself."

*blush*

Thank you, Betsy. I appreciate that people suggest these great books! I have learned a lot and enjoy reading most of the selections.

This is a tough read if your brain is bogged down with a lot of other things. I took a break from it but I've saved my place and intend to finish it later. Seems it's been a couple months since I finished a non fiction book.

Got back into this today, about half way through. I just finished the chapter about tiling and hexagons. The James Webb Telescope is made up of hexagonal mirror segments that were assembled in space. And as we all know, bees form hexagonal wax patterns, which the author informs us is quite by accident and not because bees are geometers. I'm enjoying the bit of humor but still a hard read for me.

How are you doing on it aPriL?

I bought the book because I like it. I like the humor! I wish my math teachers had been this interesting.

aPriL does feral sometimes wrote: "I bought the book because I like it. I like the humor! I wish my math teachers had been this interesting."

Me too!

I got sidetracked because of other books I wanted to read, but now I am able to concentrate on this book. For a non-math person such as myself (meaning I had to struggle for days in college with each concept of math in every math class I undertook) concentration is a must, especially since its been decades since my last math class. On one hand, it is a fantastic reveal of how the magic of math is making the work of computers ‘easy’ for users, like how printing a photo is done. On the other hand, my mind reels drunkenly in trying to grasp anything beyond ‘sort of getting it.’

This brought back my memories of trigonometry. For some reason, I found it easy to work the assigned problems, but I NEVER understood what the heck it was for.

aPriL - Right, to my surprise,geometry came easy, seemingly independent of the teachers. I like how honeybees are wired for hexagonal geometry, mineral crystals have characteristic geometrical qualities, people really like rectangles, and apparently, the physical properties of elements and molecules are dependent on the geometry due to their packing. Vascular plants take advantage of the significantly lower boiling temperature of water in the very small diameter of their redundant xylem tubes. And of course, a primary purpose of walling off the very small spaces of cells in all of life's kingdoms is to make use of abundant, unusual, changed physical properties of the molecules inside them because the packing is significantly altered from our experience in the macro world. Cool stuff!

The shape of a room can influence mood, emotions, and even behavior. For example, people may be more likely to linger in a curved room or feel more comfortable in a spacious, open space.

It's possible that the benefits of being outdoors, in a natural setting, is due to the scarcity of rectangles.

Michael wrote: "The shape of a room can influence mood, emotions, and even behavior. For example, people may be more likely to linger in a curved room or feel more comfortable in a spacious, open space.

It's pos..."

Interesting stuff, yes?

Oh. My. God. Check out the Index section….

Okay. I wasn't really planning to read this book. But you guys have gotten me intrigued.

Betsy, you said, "Feel free to use this thread to post... reviews, at any time." What is the best way to do that? If I post the link https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..., will that take people to my review or does it just take them to the book's page on Goodreads?

Alternatively, should I cut and paste my review? I'd like to share how much I liked this book, so here goes.

Because I am a popular math writer by profession, I have pretty high standards for popular math books. The main thing I'm looking for when I read a popular math book is: Does it tell me anything new, or is it a copycat that reproduces things you can find in many other books? By this test, I was DELIGHTED with Matt Parker's latest book, "Love Triangle," because he did such a good job of (a) following his own muse, and (b) talking with people who aren't professional mathematicians.

Without recapitulating the whole book, let me give a couple of examples. One reason that "trigonometry shapes the world," discussed in chapter 4, is that triangular meshes can be used to re-create smooth surfaces. This process is used a lot in engineering and in the visual effects industry, in computer games and films. Parker went out and interviewed VFX experts and found out some surprising things. For example, triangular meshes are used in computer games, but quadrilateral meshes are used in movies. He explains why, and the answers are good food for thought for anyone who might think that you can just model surfaces by connecting a bunch of dots. No, you really need to think about how you are doing it, and the right answer for a movie might be the wrong answer for an engineering model.

For another example, in the final chapter (Chapter 10) he finally gets to the topic of waves, which are indeed ubiquitous and are described mathematically by the sine and cosine functions of trigonometry fame. Here Parker does something almost no pop-math writer does: he actually gets into Fourier analysis, the process of breaking down complicated waves into their simple sine and cosine parts. This is the really good stuff that explains how "trigonometry shapes the world." Parker doesn't just give artificial math-class examples. He explains what a spectrogram is, and how you can actually see the difference between two species of monkey calls. He explains how Fourier analysis was a key to the elucidation of chemical structures by X-ray diffraction (e.g., the structure of DNA). And he shows the Fourier analysis of the first gravitational wave ever detected. This is some of the coolest science of the 20th and 21st centuries. Lots of credit and publicity (and even Nobel Prizes) go to the discoverers. But nobody thinks about the mathematics that made it all possible.

I also like the way that Parker follows his personal whims. When he finds out that there is a spot (*one* spot) in the UK where "map north" = "true north" = "magnetic north," he has to go there. When his personal friend, Alex Jones (bass guitarist of a band called Blur) wants him to come up with a math-inspired disco ball, he does some Internet sleuthing and discovers a chiral rhombification of a snub dodecahedron. You probably won't completely understand it (I can't say that I did), but it's fun to read about why this particular polyhedron was the perfect solution to Jones' request. It sure makes a pretty picture (see page 0.000000 for a computer rendering, and the following page for the actual party where Parker's mathematical disco ball was revealed).

Small cavils: 1) The page numbers in the book are the sine of the actual page numbers. Cute idea, but not explained anywhere and it actually gets in the way of finding things in the book later. 2) Parker says that he hates Heron's formula, then eats his words in the next chapter when he finds out that the formula is used for color interpolation. Kudos for honesty, but boo for underestimating Heron! When you see any formula this weird, there has to be some wonderful and mysterious math behind it. That math is the Cayley-Menger determinant. Read about it, Matt, and write about it in your next book! 3) In a book that is supposedly about trigonometry, we don't get to actual trig functions until chapter 7? 4) Chapter 10 was so fabulous that I just wanted it to keep going, and felt bummed that it seemed to end kind of abruptly.

To sum up: Parker knows people, he talks to people, he does crazy things and finds people who do crazy things. The result is a math book that doesn't feel the least bit like a math book. Recommended as a gift for any of your friends who love math but didn't love math class.

Dana wrote: "Betsy, you said, "Feel free to use this thread to post... reviews, at any time." What is the best way to do that? If I post the link https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..., wil..."

Thanks for the detailed review, Dana. You have persuaded me to read the book - I just now downloaded it from our library!

By the way, I loved your book The Universe in Zero Words: The Story of Mathematics as Told through Equations!

Thank you so much Dana! I have been wondering what those page numbers were. I could tell they were sine numbers of something but couldn't quite figure it out. Great review.

Dana wrote: "Betsy, you said, "Feel free to use this thread to post... reviews, at any time." What is the best way to do that? If I post the link https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..., wil..."

To answer your question, either is fine. Yes, the link you inserted just took us to the book page. But you can find the link to your review in Goodreads and insert that, if you want. Just go to your Books, find the subject book in your list, click the "view" link at the far right of the entry. Then copy the URL of that page.

David wrote: "Dana wrote: "Betsy, you said, "Feel free to use this thread to post... reviews, at any time." What is the best way to do that? If I post the link https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...-..."

Thanks, David! It's always nice to find out somebody has enjoyed one of my books. You may be interested in another math book that I'm working on now, which will be published next year by Princeton University Press. The title is "You, Me, and Master Sun: How We Solved a 2,000-Year-Old Math Problem." I hope that whets your interest!

I've started reading this book -- about halfway through. It starts out slow, because there isn't much new to me. But as I progress through the chapters, I read more about unfamiliar concepts in geometry. And the writing is quite entertaining!

I finally finished reading Love Triangle: How Trigonometry Shapes the World. Quite enjoyable. Not much new here for me, except for the chapter on 3-D solid objects. Here is my review.