Vince Vatter

Hot take: The trapezoid area formula isn’t math, it’s an algebra trick. Teach kids to cut trapezoids up instead. When are they ever going to use that formula outside math class anyway?

A pair of problems by Jay Pantone, who works in analytic combinatorics, were solved earlier: one by GPT-5 and one by GPT-5.1. GPT-5.2 Pro solved these as well. The solutions were both valid, but Jay noted that both used numerical shortcuts that he didn’t intend.

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day 1010: 120 points 78%
digit.party

Playing random web games on my phone - taltech on Twitch taltech went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Games + Demos VOD now.

Digit Party!
m.twitch.tv/videos/26561...

Digit Party just went over 1000 days!

Robert Brignall and I celebrated by redesigning the whole thing. Place digits, match neighbors.

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day 1001: 146 points 66%
digit.party

Digit Party just went over 1000 days!

Robert Brignall and I celebrated by redesigning the whole thing. Place digits, match neighbors.

🟧🟧⬜⬜🟥
⬜🟧🟧🟥🟪
⬜⬜🟥🟪🟫
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day 1001: 146 points 66%
digit.party

Everyone hates springing forward but loves falling back. Proposal: Abolish leap days, and redistribute those hours in the form of 6 annual "fall back" holidays. More sleep, less leap. A clear pareto improvement to our calendar.

Manifold markets: Will Gary Marcus still say that deep learning models can't reason after they prove the Riemann hypothesis?

Thanks to co-PIs Sarah Sword, @jaypantone.com, and Ryota Matsuura, and to our advisory board, for countless hours shaping what good proof feedback should look like.

Teaching intro to proofs this semester or next? We have a couple of spots left for college/university faculty who would be interested in participating in a field test. Details on the site, or reply or DM.

Try it: hallmos.com

Free, browser-based, no account. Students, professors, and the proof-curious are welcome. Choose from common intro-to-proofs exercises, or use the sandbox with your own exercise.

I'm excited to share: we built a free AI coach for intro-level proof writing. It critiques drafts, points out gaps, and helps you or your students iterate without giving away the answer. Also for lapsed mathematicians to see if they've still got it. Demo below, link in reply.

Federal Funding for Mathematics Research—What’s Changed in the Last Six Years? This article was solicited in early 2024 and completed in Fall 2024. It therefore does not reflect the changes that have occurred, and which are still going on, at federal science-funding agencies in 2025. For example, website links given in the article may not be active at the time of publication. - Ed.

Published today in the Notices of the AMS. Lol.

The number of American kings over time: a harrowing saga of job insecurity, with a notable dip after 1776 and a suspicious lack of improvement since.

meanwhile, wikipedia is in existential crisis over whether √4 deserves its own page

Line graph showing the frequency of years ending in “00,” from 1800 to 2020, in English books.

people like years more than ever though. reliably, year X mentions peak during year X+2.

Google Ngram Viewer line graph showing the frequency of digits 0 through 9 in English books from 1800 to 2019, with usage peaking around 1980 and declining sharply afterward.

interest in the natural numbers is at an all-time low

digit.party match numbers, score points. daily challenge + random boards

Just to say how much I like the digit party game digit.party created by Robert Brignall and @vatter.bsky.social.

Of course they would choose a math major

FOX NEWS: Cardinals assess Pope Francis' legacy before vote. Delegates include $\aleph_0$, $\aleph_1$, $\beth_2$, and others, as the continuum hypothesis looms over the ceremonies.

Digit Party Clock A minimalist analog and digital clock. Perfect for proctoring exams, or just keeping time beautifully.

It’s final exam season again, and I like to display a clock while proctoring.
But all the web clocks google suggests suck.
So I made one (okay, tbh, chatgpt made it under my supervision):
digit.party/clock

For a fuller glimpse of our dystopian future:
spinup-000d1a-wp-offload-media.s3.amazonaws.com/faculty/wp-c...

AI: Hello, is this Ms. Zhang San? User: This is Ms. Zhang San’s robot phone assistant, may I ask what you want to discuss with her? AI: Sorry for disturbing you, goodbye!

AI debt collector exhibiting speciesism

A001339 a(n) = Sum_{k=0..n} (k+1)! binomial(n,k). 1, 3, 11, 49, 261, 1631, 11743, 95901, 876809, 8877691, 98641011, ...

Needless to say, A001339 is not the same sequence, does not count preferential arrangements, and neither sequence has anything to do with the egf 1⁄(2−exp(x)). All of this was completely made up.

'bc I'm tired'

Excellent example of how LLMs just reproduce what they've seen in their training data.

ChatGPT-4o: "go to OEIS bc i’m tired: [1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 17, 73, …] → OEIS A001339"

you're what now chatgpt?

I mean, it’s still better to have money than not have money right?

Instructions for assignment: Color each square blue. Color each rectangle yellow. Color each circle red.

you'll never guess what color my daughter's squares ended up

Everyone hates springing forward but loves falling back. Proposal: Abolish leap days, and redistribute those hours in the form of 6 annual "fall back" holidays. More sleep, less leap. A clear pareto improvement to our calendar.

André's Reflection Method 😃