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I genuinely don't want to sound pedantic or critical - but anyone who dabbled in maths - from olympiads in school or undergrad or did math for research - would

I genuinely don't want to sound pedantic or critical - but anyone who dabbled in maths - from olympiads in school or undergrad or did math for research - would have several such notes for e.g. of graph theoretic models or combinatorics doodles. I used to color mine, or had different dashes/bold schemes for visualization of my problem space. I think blog author came across this & found it beautiful (good for him!). But IRL this type of doodling is commonplace among math folks. From their viewpoint, most mathematician's I've met, admire someone's blackboard skills - handwriting, problem layout, & Hagomoro chalks. And the second one would be the witty/intelligent communication in their papers, book or seminal work - which sometimes gain cult status in their small circles.

contravariant 3y ago
Something can be both commonplace and nice to look at. I found it interesting to see the ways it resembled and differed from my own notes.
deleted 3y ago
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gilleain 3y ago
Sure, it's fair to say that most mathematicians would have similar journals (I guess? - has anyone asked :)) I'm not a mathematician, but I have journals with pictures of knots, protei folds, chemical structures, graphs (Eulerian), and so on. Are they as beautiful as the Nobel prize winners? Probably not. I like the diversity on just these pages though - Feynman diagrams, a projective plane, some kind of tiling ...
- jesuslop 3y ago
  Fano plane, quaternions...
mathematicaster 3y ago
This, and more .. ... all the way out to the digital frontier of professional wacom tablets and 4 feet wide plotters. A fun hobby for some.
haswell 3y ago
To me, this makes the doodles more interesting for a few reasons: 1. Penrose obviously is well known, so I’m more likely to pay attention 2. This is more about seeing how mathematicians think and less about a specific individual 3. There’s something cool about seeing that people in the field all start from the same foundation, and it brings Penrose back down to earth a bit
abdullahkhalids 3y ago
Most people live in houses, and at the basic level all houses are the same, and yet Charles Darwin's house is a widely visited heritage site [1]. We are humans, and we are social creatures, who care about such things. [1] https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/home-of-charles-darwin-down-house/ https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/home-of-cha...

contravariant 3y ago

Something can be both commonplace and nice to look at. I found it interesting to see the ways it resembled and differed from my own notes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gilleain 3y ago

Sure, it's fair to say that most mathematicians would have similar journals (I guess? - has anyone asked :)) I'm not a mathematician, but I have journals with pictures of knots, protei folds, chemical structures, graphs (Eulerian), and so on. Are they as beautiful as the Nobel prize winners? Probably not. I like the diversity on just these pages though - Feynman diagrams, a projective plane, some kind of tiling ...

jesuslop 3y ago
Fano plane, quaternions...

mathematicaster 3y ago

This, and more .. ... all the way out to the digital frontier of professional wacom tablets and 4 feet wide plotters. A fun hobby for some.

haswell 3y ago

To me, this makes the doodles more interesting for a few reasons: 1. Penrose obviously is well known, so I’m more likely to pay attention 2. This is more about seeing how mathematicians think and less about a specific individual 3. There’s something cool about seeing that people in the field all start from the same foundation, and it brings Penrose back down to earth a bit

abdullahkhalids 3y ago

Most people live in houses, and at the basic level all houses are the same, and yet Charles Darwin's house is a widely visited heritage site [1]. We are humans, and we are social creatures, who care about such things. [1] https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/home-of-charles-darwin-down-house/ https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/home-of-cha...