5 ms·

"That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scien

by cft 11y ago

"That same year an unlikely mathematical pioneer entered the fray: Marjorie Rice, a San Diego housewife in her 50s, who had read about James’ discovery in Scientific American. An amateur mathematician, Rice developed her own notation and method and over the next few years discovered another four types of pentagon that tile the plane. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Rice

shoo 11y ago
Rice's pentagons are illustrated here [1]: Type 9, Type 11, Type 12 and Type 13. [1] http://www.mathpuzzle.com/tilepent.html http://www.mathpuzzle.com/tilepent.html
- morcheeba 11y ago
  >Types 6-8 were found by R. B. Kershner in 1968. >Type 10 was found R. James in 1975. >Types 9, 11-13 were found by M. Rice in 1976-1977. Dammit, R. James! You can't just skip numbers like that and mess up Rice's streak!!
1arity 11y ago
that's awesome. Outsider math and outsider art deserve as much respect as "outsider" programming ( startups / garage hackers ) garner. Creating semi-closed communities of insiders, united by what are essentially arcane handshakes, and dismissive of value emerging outside of themselves, is really just both a narrow-mindedness that doesn't behoove innovation and also an admission of an unnecessary insecurity about the lack of substantive reasons for cohesiveness in that community resulting in the desire to fabricate arbitrary insubstantial reasons for cohesiveness. At the same time, you could say that narrow-mindedness was focus and restraint, things which __do__ work for innovation. Another way of looking at the cohesiveness issue, is that if your community is so substantially strong, why do you need to exclude outsiders ? The best democracies include difference, revealing their strength through diversity. The worst extremist fascist states put it to death, revealing their dread of diversity. Let the ad-hoc groups of intellectual collaborators be like democratic meritocracies not frightened facist states.
- cousin_it 11y ago
  IMO the analogy doesn't hold up very well. Outsider art is often very good, and outsider programming seems like a weird idea (do startup hackers have less training than BigCo employees?) But that's beside the point. If you're looking at the tiny subset of outsider science that's chosen for correctness and publication-worthiness, of course you'll be enthusiastic about it. But these people, like Marjorie Rice, aren't really facing any obstacles from the establishment! If their work has merit, they usually get a warm welcome. The elephant in the room is that >99% of outsider science is extremely bad, and can't understand why it's bad even after repeated explanations. Pretty much all the people complaining about the scientific establishment are like "fermatists", who used to hover around math institutes to have their proofs of FLT checked. If you're not familiar with such people, I urge you to actually look at a sample of their work and form your own opinion. After that I think you'll be less eager to throw accusations around. A scientist's life is hard enough already, without people telling her she's an insecure evil fascist for rejecting torsion fields, the EmDrive, or Time Cube.
  - 3pt14159 11y ago
    > their proofs of FLT checked. What does FLT stand for? Fermat's Last Theorem?
    - jordigh 11y ago
      Yes. Maths cranks are extremely common. If you have an academic maths email, you're likely to receive crank emails with some regularity.
  - kordless 11y ago
    The only person throwing accusations around is you. This is a huge blanket blaming statement: > 99% outsider science is extremely bad, and can't understand why it's bad even after repeated explanations A challenge dealing with noise in a system is an opportunity for a solution, not a rationalization to censor people. That < .01% may be onto something big.
dunkelheit 11y ago
Wow. I personally cannot do much work without being part of a community to share and refine ideas with. It is amazing that someone can produce important work while working essentially in isolation.
cokernel 11y ago
She has a website for her tesselations (which that Wikipedia article links to), but unfortunately is no longer able to respond to queries: https://sites.google.com/site/intriguingtessellations/home/ https://sites.google.com/site/intriguingtessellations/home/ There's a nice tiling of butterflies there.
- 1arity 11y ago
  how cool is this lady seriously. the symmetric tiling is really astounding and the roses one has a julia-set quality to its edges.

by cft 11y ago

shoo 11y ago

Rice's pentagons are illustrated here [1]: Type 9, Type 11, Type 12 and Type 13. [1] http://www.mathpuzzle.com/tilepent.html http://www.mathpuzzle.com/tilepent.html

morcheeba 11y ago
>Types 6-8 were found by R. B. Kershner in 1968. >Type 10 was found R. James in 1975. >Types 9, 11-13 were found by M. Rice in 1976-1977. Dammit, R. James! You can't just skip numbers like that and mess up Rice's streak!!

1arity 11y ago

that's awesome. Outsider math and outsider art deserve as much respect as "outsider" programming ( startups / garage hackers ) garner. Creating semi-closed communities of insiders, united by what are essentially arcane handshakes, and dismissive of value emerging outside of themselves, is really just both a narrow-mindedness that doesn't behoove innovation and also an admission of an unnecessary insecurity about the lack of substantive reasons for cohesiveness in that community resulting in the desire to fabricate arbitrary insubstantial reasons for cohesiveness. At the same time, you could say that narrow-mindedness was focus and restraint, things which __do__ work for innovation. Another way of looking at the cohesiveness issue, is that if your community is so substantially strong, why do you need to exclude outsiders ? The best democracies include difference, revealing their strength through diversity. The worst extremist fascist states put it to death, revealing their dread of diversity. Let the ad-hoc groups of intellectual collaborators be like democratic meritocracies not frightened facist states.

cousin_it 11y ago
IMO the analogy doesn't hold up very well. Outsider art is often very good, and outsider programming seems like a weird idea (do startup hackers have less training than BigCo employees?) But that's beside the point. If you're looking at the tiny subset of outsider science that's chosen for correctness and publication-worthiness, of course you'll be enthusiastic about it. But these people, like Marjorie Rice, aren't really facing any obstacles from the establishment! If their work has merit, they usually get a warm welcome. The elephant in the room is that >99% of outsider science is extremely bad, and can't understand why it's bad even after repeated explanations. Pretty much all the people complaining about the scientific establishment are like "fermatists", who used to hover around math institutes to have their proofs of FLT checked. If you're not familiar with such people, I urge you to actually look at a sample of their work and form your own opinion. After that I think you'll be less eager to throw accusations around. A scientist's life is hard enough already, without people telling her she's an insecure evil fascist for rejecting torsion fields, the EmDrive, or Time Cube.
- 3pt14159 11y ago
  > their proofs of FLT checked. What does FLT stand for? Fermat's Last Theorem?
  - jordigh 11y ago
    Yes. Maths cranks are extremely common. If you have an academic maths email, you're likely to receive crank emails with some regularity.
- kordless 11y ago
  The only person throwing accusations around is you. This is a huge blanket blaming statement: > 99% outsider science is extremely bad, and can't understand why it's bad even after repeated explanations A challenge dealing with noise in a system is an opportunity for a solution, not a rationalization to censor people. That < .01% may be onto something big.

dunkelheit 11y ago

Wow. I personally cannot do much work without being part of a community to share and refine ideas with. It is amazing that someone can produce important work while working essentially in isolation.

cokernel 11y ago

She has a website for her tesselations (which that Wikipedia article links to), but unfortunately is no longer able to respond to queries: https://sites.google.com/site/intriguingtessellations/home/ https://sites.google.com/site/intriguingtessellations/home/ There's a nice tiling of butterflies there.

1arity 11y ago
how cool is this lady seriously. the symmetric tiling is really astounding and the roses one has a julia-set quality to its edges.