Top all-time · #4670
ThatsMaths
Personal blog · thatsmaths.commathscience
ThatsMaths is a personal blog at thatsmaths.com about math and science. Since 2013, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 21 times, most often “Sunflowers and Fibonacci: Models of Efficiency (2014)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-15, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link ThatsMaths for accessible maths explainers: 0.999... and surreal numbers, power tower fractals, Roman numerals, Fermi estimates of the Trinity blast, and sunflowers and Fibonacci.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Follow on twitter: @thatsmaths
Most-linked posts?
- Sunflowers and Fibonacci: Models of Efficiency (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-09-26
- /2019/07/04/what-did-the-romans-ever-do-for-maths/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-20
What Hacker News says?
Someone else here brought up the surreal numbers and my intuition says that it's right to do that. The various arithmetic proofs thrown around here don't explicitly make use of completeness. As such they should be correct proofs in the surreal numbers as well. But they basically are not. Here is a blog post about it: https://thatsmaths.com/2019/01/10/really-0-999999-is-equal-t... I don't quite know how to formalize…
Comment linking /2019/01/10/really-0-999999-is-equal-to-1-surreally-this-is-not-so/
on “0.999...= 1”Submitted Sunflowers and Fibonacci: Models of Efficiency (2014) as a story · 23 points
HN discussionIt's smart of you to bring up the surreal numbers: https://thatsmaths.com/2019/01/10/really-0-999999-is-equal-t...
Comment linking /2019/01/10/really-0-999999-is-equal-to-1-surreally-this-is-not-so/
on “0.999...= 1”Submitted Mowing the Lawn in Spirals as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThis analysis can also be expanded to the complex numbers yielding "power tower fractals" aka "tetration fractals". http://paulbourke.net/fractals/tetration/ https://thatsmaths.com/2016/04/14/the-power-tower-fractal/
Comment linking /2016/04/14/the-power-tower-fractal/
on “The strange properties of the infinite power tower”Submitted Ramanujan’s Astonishing Knowledge of 1729 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWikipedia has plenty of citations to classical Rome. Colosseum gate 44: XLIIII (not, for whatever reason, XLIV, or XXXXIIII) 18th legion: XIIX 22nd legion: IIXX There was evidently not a strict standard. (Note also that the symbols we use for high values, D and M, weren't really what the Romans used. You can see Roman abaci with columns labeled with place values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RomanAbacusRecon.j…
Comment linking /2019/07/04/what-did-the-romans-ever-do-for-maths/
on “Cistercian Numerals”Submitted Which is larger, e^pi or pi^e? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's why arithmetical calculation was a role one had. They used an abacus for the calculation of complex sums. https://thatsmaths.com/2019/07/04/what-did-the-romans-ever-d...
Comment linking /2019/07/04/what-did-the-romans-ever-do-for-maths/
on “Cistercian Numerals”Submitted Hanoi Graphs and Sierpinski’s Triangle as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGuy writes 10 bazillion sub-lit-crit words on rollercoasters, fails to mention Euler spirals and clothoids, where the beauty is, where maths guides and protects meat. A depressing lack of curiosity by the author. https://thatsmaths.com/2014/04/10/rollercoaster-loops/
Comment linking /2014/04/10/rollercoaster-loops/
on “The occult technology of the rollercoaster”Submitted Doughnuts and Tonnetze as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWikipedia says the Trinity test was 20 kilotons. With Fermi estimating 10 kt, he was off by a factor of only two. Of course Taylor got an estimate within 2 as well, using photographs published in Life magazine. https://thatsmaths.com/2014/09/18/how-big-was-the-bomb/
Comment linking /2014/09/18/how-big-was-the-bomb/
on “Estimating a nuclear blast with bits of paper”Submitted Marvellous Merchiston’s Logarithms as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://thatsmaths.com/2025/10/16/music-and-maths-are-inextr...
Comment linking /2025/10/16/music-and-maths-are-inextricably-intertwined/
on “The Tonnetz”Submitted The Power Tower as a story · 2 points
HN discussionPlants may not have a concept of numbers or math, but they seem to follow mathematical patterns regardless. https://thatsmaths.com/2014/06/05/sunflowers-and-fibonacci-m...
Comment linking /2014/06/05/sunflowers-and-fibonacci-models-of-efficiency/
on “Is math real?”Submitted Modelling a Balanced Pencil(2014) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Torricelli’s Trumpet and the Painter’s Paradox (2017) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Kepler's Magnificent Mysterium Cosmographicum (2016) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Shaky Foundations of Mathematics as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
