Vince Vatter

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 😃

Logical proof that "months" are fake.

Most people born in April are Aries.
All Aries are born in March or April.
Most people born in March or April were born in March.
Therefore, most people born in April were born in March.

Avoidable and Unavoidable Randomness in GPT-4o | Towards Data Science Exploring the sources of randomness in GPT-4o from the known and controllable to the opaque and uncontrollable.

I asked GPT-4o to flip a coin 10,000 times. Same prompt, same parameters, but the *odds of getting Heads* took on 42 different probabilities (none below 85% btw). Obv don't use gpt-4o to flip your coins, but what the hell is going on? Here are some thoughts.
towardsdatascience.com/avoidable-an...

Actually it's ok to divide by zero as long as you use the proper facilities. 🧮

A screenshot from Containing All Permutations featuring Theorem 5 (Anonymous 4chan poster): For all $n\ge 1$, every $n$-superpermutation has length at least $n!+(n-1)!+(n-2)!n-3$.

Want more superpermutation fun? My free article Containing All Permutations in the Mathematical Monthly covers this and related problems, and features, of course, Theorem 5 (Anonymous 4chan poster).
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

How Anime Fans Stumbled upon a Mathematical Proof When a fan of a cult anime series wanted to watch its episodes in every possible order, they asked a question that had perplexed combinatorial mathematicians for years

There's an article in Scientific American today about superpermutations mentioning @robin.boskerenterprises.com, @gregegansf.bsky.social, @njohnston.ca, @jaypantone.com, me, and of course, “Anonymous 4chan Poster.”
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Reference list with a citation for The Terminator (1984) by James Cameron, published by Orion Pictures, nestled alongside academic papers on AI and security.

'Please help us improve Google' popup with buttons 'NO THANKS' and 'SHOW QUESTION'.

the first step is admitting you have a problem. the second step is asking random users to fix it for free.

Starbucks mobile order screen showing a customized Venti Iced Caffè Americano with 4 shots of espresso, 2/3 decaf, and ice. Questionable caffeine logic at play.

how????

$2^{2^n}+1$ isn't prime for $5\le n\le 32$. By the prime number theorem, $m$ is prime with probability ${\approx\nicefrac{1}{\ln m}}$. The probability that another number of this form is prime is about \[ \sum_{n=33}^\infty \frac{1}{\ln (2^{2^n}+1)} < \sum_{n=33}^\infty \frac{1}{2^n\ln 2} = \frac{1}{2^{32}\ln 2} \approx 0.000000000359. \]

Fermat thought 2^(2^n))+1 was prime after checking n=0,1,2,3,4. Euler factored the n=5 case, oops. Worse still, the odds are we'll never see another Fermat prime.

Look upon my proofs and despair.

So THIS is the best line I've seen in a proof.

but doctor, I *am* a coward