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

[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.