This is fabulous.

[velvetpage]

It makes me want to go back to school and learn more math. I gotta tell ya, I don't think I've ever said that before.

Knit theory, only it's really crochet

Yoinked from wyldraven

Edit: I just read the rest of the article, and I'm amazed at how a journalist who appears to have a working knowledge of high-level math can't seem to grasp the difference between knitting and crocheting. She's not knitting; indeed, knitting wouldn't work at all for this project. She's crocheting, and doing something that anyone who has ever worked a ruffle knows how to do: she increasing the number of stitches exponentially each row, so she starts with a straight line of, say, eight chain stitches, and four rows later has 64 stitches that ruffle. This is the basis for any lacework pattern that doesn't need to lay flat, and I've done it dozens of times.

I've crocheted the hyperbolic plane! Cool!

Comments

[althea_valara]

:) I've read that article previously, but it was good to read it again. I may need to see about subscribing to Discover. It's one of the few magazines that I read cover to cover.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed at how a journalist who appears to have a working knowledge of high-level math can't seem to grasp the difference between knitting and crocheting.

There's a mental chasm between high-level math and knitting/crocheting. I'm not sure this is a good thing; this is the second time I've heard of a mathematician meeting with knitting and realizing that there's points of similarity. (The first one was in one of Richard Feynman's books.)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate, because most handicrafts are extremely mathematical in nature. Whenever I teach geometry, multiplication, division, and a few other concepts, I take in craft magazines and books to show my kids. Where will you find a better example of basic geometry than in a quilting book, for example? And this is not the only mathematical application of crochet that I've seen, though it's the highest level.

[toad-hall.livejournal.com]

nothing has helped me more with math than my many half-assed hobbies. I really wish my math teachers would have brought in more hands on examples. I think I would have enjoyed and understood math a lot more back in school if they had.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The kids in my math classes draw two-colour quilts on graph paper to show basic tiling patterns, and last year I gave them all bits of origami paper in two or three colours, showed them how to cut it to make two types of triangles, and told them to make a quilt square by gluing the pieces to another piece of paper. They had to be able to describe and re-create the pattern later. They had a ball.

Math can be handy...

[gracevlikevrain.livejournal.com]

LOL...I just had to find the formula to figure out the radius of a circle if you only know the circumference when I was making gift bags...so maybe all those math classes I sat through in high school are useful in every day life afterall. =)

Re: Math can be handy...

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Divide the circumference by 3.14, then take the square root of your answer. :) I've actually taught that stuff - or rather, tried to. My grade sevens didn't get it.

Re: Math can be handy...

[gracevlikevrain.livejournal.com]

OH! It's the square root? I was dividing it in half! Maybe that's why my circles were a little bit off and things got bunchy. I'll have to try again.

I'm 10 years removed from this stuff...thanks for the reminder. =)

Re: Math can be handy...

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, the formula is C = pi * r squared. Or is that the area? Now I'm confused. :)

Re: Math can be handy...

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

You're right. I had the formula wrong. This is what I get for doing it without a textbook handy. :)

Re: Math can be handy...

[gracevlikevrain.livejournal.com]

Once I thought about I realized that David and I had the same conversation about the area formula vs. the radius formula in the car last night...(yikes, if that doesn't say geek I don't know what does!)

Either way, it doesn't explain why my circles didn't fit quite right...hmmm...

Re: Math can be handy...

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

No, to get the radius you divide by 2*pi, You had it right, velvetpage didn'ty. What she gave you was the way to get the radius from the area.

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

Very cool article! I'm gonna email the link to my sister, who crochets.

[hendrikboom.livejournal.com]

I once knitted a moebius strip using a flexible circular knitting needle that went around the edge (twice around the loop, of course. Casting on took some real inspiration, and the first few rows were really tight. I had to use a crochet needle to move the loops from one end of the needle to the other. But after that it went more easily, and by about row three (or was it six?) I could assume a more normal knitting procedure.

After that I did another by crocheting. Much easier.

Once, when I was about ten, I had a flexible snap-together plastic kind of building thing -- called flex-something -- I forget just what. I decided to see what I could get by making an array of squares and putting one to many at each corner. It got quite messy, and I discovered I had some king of primordial fear of the kind of shape I was building, and quickly took it apart before I could see its full majesty.

I wonder there that primordial fear could possibly have come from. Did our ancestors encounter really dangerous hyperbolic planes in our remote past? Did I encounter them as a toddler?