{"id":1494,"date":"2020-03-07T08:23:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T13:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josmfs.net\/?p=1494"},"modified":"2020-04-16T14:21:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T18:21:01","slug":"geometric-puzzle-munificence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2020\/03\/07\/geometric-puzzle-munificence\/","title":{"rendered":"Geometric Puzzle Munificence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Having fallen under the spell of Catriona Shearer\u2019s geometric puzzles again, I thought I would present the latest group assembled by Ben Orlin, which he dubs \u201cFelt Tip Geometry<\/a>\u201d, along with a bonus of two more recent ones that caught my fancy as being fine examples of Shearer\u2019s laconic style. Orlin added his own names to the four he assembled and I added names to my two, again ordered from easier to harder.<\/p>\n

See Geometric Puzzle Munificence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Update 4\/16\/2020)<\/strong>\u00a0 Ben Orlin has another set of Catriona Shearer puzzles 11 Geometry Puzzles That Drive Mathematicians to Madness<\/a> which I will leave you to see and enjoy. But I wanted to emphasize some observations he included that I think are spot on. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a meta-problem,\u201d mathematician Timothy Gowers recently mused, \u201cthat it\u2019s vaguely on my to-do list to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gowers, a 1998 Fields medalist, has done breakthrough work in combinatorics. Dude\u2019s a Royal Society Research Professor at University of Cambridge. His to-do list is no doubt a catalog of deep and important mathematical questions. So what is this meta-problem nagging at him?<\/p>\n

\u201cHOW DOES CATRIONA SHEARER DO IT???\u201d<\/p>\n

Catriona Shearer is a math teacher whose Twitter account<\/a> features homemade geometry puzzles. But \u201cpuzzles\u201d perhaps undersells them. These are puzzles that entice and entrance mathematicians of every stripe.<\/p>\n

Puzzles that elicit caps-lock, triple-punctuated expressions of wonder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen anyone in my entire life,\u201d says the mathematician Mike Lawler, \u201cwho has an eye for neat geometry problems like Catriona Shearer does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese problems can\u2019t just pop into her head,\u201d insists Gowers. \u201cDoes she have a general theory? Or a nice bag of tricks? Or what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday I read a tweet of hers,\u201d chimed in John Carlos Baez, a leading category theorist, \u201cwhere she said she\u2019s not as creative as some people seem to think: she keeps using the same tricks over and over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d Baez noted, \u201cis also what Feynman said.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having fallen under the spell of Catriona Shearer\u2019s geometric puzzles again, I thought I would present the latest group assembled by Ben Orlin, which he dubs \u201cFelt Tip Geometry\u201d, along with a bonus of two more recent ones that caught my fancy as being fine examples of Shearer\u2019s laconic style. Orlin added his own names […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[40,169,42,13,41],"class_list":["post-1494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-puzzles-and-problems","tag-analytic-geometry","tag-ben-orlin","tag-catriona-agg","tag-plane-geometry","tag-trigonometry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}