The Art of Mathematics in Chalk(scientificamerican.com)
scientificamerican.com
The Art of Mathematics in Chalk
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-art-of-mathematics-in-chalk/
38 comments
One thing that annoys me is the reasons administrators give for replacing chalkboards: "chalk boards are hard to maintain, the chalk powder gets all over the place, etc". But then they replace them with whiteboards that they probably spend twice as much to maintain. If they just spent that same effort sourcing high quality chalk and chalk holders, chalk boards would work great.
I can’t stand chalkboards. I find the sound of chalk on a chalkboard borderline intolerable, and they’re harder to read than whiteboards. I can’t stand the sound of sharpies on paper either, which for some reason I have the impression mathematicians are also quite fond of.
An old Soviet joke.
Professor in a math class calls out a student to draw a circle on the blackboard. The student makes a perfect one; the Platonic ideal of a circle in one swift, generous motion. The professor is impressed and inquiries, how come?
- See, all I did in my two years of military service was operating a meat grinder.
Professor in a math class calls out a student to draw a circle on the blackboard. The student makes a perfect one; the Platonic ideal of a circle in one swift, generous motion. The professor is impressed and inquiries, how come?
- See, all I did in my two years of military service was operating a meat grinder.
There are actually people who can quickly draw really good circles.
Here's a video of Alexander Overwijk, who has won the World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship numerous times, drawing a circle [1].
Here's Michael Clauss, who ended a streak of 9 consecutive Overwijk wins [2].
Here's some footage of the first World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship in 2007, showing several different contestents [3].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAhfZUZiwSE
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9NgVbEhe44
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1J5ANnq0T8
Here's a video of Alexander Overwijk, who has won the World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship numerous times, drawing a circle [1].
Here's Michael Clauss, who ended a streak of 9 consecutive Overwijk wins [2].
Here's some footage of the first World Freehand Circle Drawing Championship in 2007, showing several different contestents [3].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAhfZUZiwSE
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9NgVbEhe44
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1J5ANnq0T8
“Giotto used the perfect circle to demonstrate the level of artistry he earned” http://theorbitbrown.com/site/the-perfect-circle/ sometimes it is attributed to Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci
Even if you didn't mention it was a Soviet joke, I'd know it was Russian.
I don't get the joke haha, can someone explain it?
A manual meat grinder [0] is operated by running a hand crank that moves in a circular motion. The implication is that after two years of having done only this one job, the motion is instilled in the hand such that they can now draw perfect circles. The Soviet army was infamous for both its cruelty and the pointless repetitive errands the conscripts would have to do.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_grinder
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_grinder
Reminds me of the story of Hagoromo shutting down their chalk business several years ago. Previous HN discussions from 2015 and 2019. [1] [2]
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770017 "Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business"
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237878 "The Chalk Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuff"
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770017 "Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business"
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237878 "The Chalk Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuff"
Hagoromo changed hands after those articles, and now runs from South Korea, I think. An Amazon review says it's no longer the Rolls Royce of chalk, but more like a "really dope Lexus".
I have never used the old chalk, but the new ones are plenty good IMO, and certainly significantly better than any standard-issue chalk anywhere. Everyone I know who still has a blackboard has a private stash of Hagoromo in their office.
The article mentions the chalkboards having been removed at Cambridge, but I recall one of the colleges having chalkboards in the toilets at one of the sites¹. They were a curious mix of nerdy jokes riffing on regular toilet graffiti, jokes that felt stolen from Futurama, and a few apparent attempts at some actual work. I think the playfulness allowed them to be interesting, as you can place offbeat thoughts on to them without tying yourself to them too deeply.
¹ Can't recall which one it was, but suspect they'd be a casualty of the past year anyway. Edit: Pretty sure it was the INI.
¹ Can't recall which one it was, but suspect they'd be a casualty of the past year anyway. Edit: Pretty sure it was the INI.
The nearly brand-new theoretical physics building in Oxford has a chalkboard in every communal area and office bar one -- the head of department, a man whose surname 'Chalker' belies a slight personal preference for whiteboards.
It is also one of the few places in the world I have seen Hagomoro chalk left free for people to use, along with free, excellent, bean-to-cup coffee machines.
It is also one of the few places in the world I have seen Hagomoro chalk left free for people to use, along with free, excellent, bean-to-cup coffee machines.
If I'm correct… that¹ is a alluring building. Has the copper started to weather yet? Making a mental note that I want to see it, more so when it has aged a little.
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beecroft_Building
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beecroft_Building
I still think chalk boards are superior due to the feeling and aesthetics. I had a chalk board of 2qm at home but got rid of it after leaving uni. I have white boards in the office and at home, and it's still superior to the Samsung Flip we also have, but nothing is even close to chalk boards. Not sure why. Feels down to earth? You feel more connected to the medium? I'm wondering how much of it is nostalgia (we had chalk boards in school) and how some of the next generations would see it. But the pencils still smell funny and the black colour of the pencil on your hands still sucks.
Now I want a chalk board again. So aesthetically pleasing, damn.
Now I want a chalk board again. So aesthetically pleasing, damn.
I think physical stimuli is undervalued in cognition. The more we feel about something we like the deeper it goes. Reductionism is not an improvement for this part of human life.
Oh absolutely. I still have a personal and a work notebook (pen + paper). Although I journal digitally as well, I feel it goes deeper and feels more committed when writing it on paper than digitally. It doesn't feel like just dumping whatever comes to mind.
I like the friction of chalk-on-blackboard; somehow I write better with it than on white boards. For the same reason, I prefer pencil to pen on paper, and both to an Apple Pencil on an iPad (though the latter is what I mainly use these days because it's easier to share with people).
That's still an open topic for me, having a proper digitising process somehow. I tried the apple pencil a few months ago for a few weeks, but it's just too expensive for a fancy notebook. While studying it would be nice though.
There is a lecture style particularly in mathematics where the professor writes a long derivation, proof, or calculation on the board while lecturing. For this style, a chalkboard works better than a whiteboard or any other technology I've seen.
if you like the look 'stuff happening on a chalkboard', you might like cy twombly's paintings from around 1968-70, e.g. http://telnet.asia/synopsis_of_a_battle.jpg
of course it's you
I'm an avid fan of all boards - I consider them magnets for creativity, collaboration, and exploration. My father and one of my brothers are professors and I'm well-versed in the chalkboard vs. whiteboard debate.
My team's solution to the sudden dearth of boards in our lives was to launch sharetheboard.com - it allows board-users to connect with board-lovers remotely AND legibly, while digitizing contents in real time. Coming in about one week, we'll release a streaming feature to make this process even easier. Best of all, it supports BOTH blackboards and whiteboards.
To any fellow board enthusiasts: please give it a try and share your thoughts (or wait until the streaming feature launches - in a few days). Thanks in advance for your frank feedback.
My team's solution to the sudden dearth of boards in our lives was to launch sharetheboard.com - it allows board-users to connect with board-lovers remotely AND legibly, while digitizing contents in real time. Coming in about one week, we'll release a streaming feature to make this process even easier. Best of all, it supports BOTH blackboards and whiteboards.
To any fellow board enthusiasts: please give it a try and share your thoughts (or wait until the streaming feature launches - in a few days). Thanks in advance for your frank feedback.
Jokes aside, I never have seen lecturers to make such beauty on whiteboards. There is an old religious war of blackboards vs. whiteboards, and somehow the whiteboard has won and lost at the same time.
It seems some of the boards are out-of-order with respect to the captions. See the one on natural language - the referenced scribblings on hom(top) and functor existence are two pictures up
Unmentioned is Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk ... the standard for academic mathematics.
You know your seminar's well prepared when there's a box of Hagoromo chalk on the tray.
You know your seminar's well prepared when there's a box of Hagoromo chalk on the tray.
I didn’t read the article, but it was quite soothing to look at the chalkboard photos. Perhaps due to the superficial chaos and the order that arises from it.
I’d be curious if there was a subreddit dedicated to these types of chalk math photos.
If you liked this, the article reminded me of a paper I read, "Chalk: Materials and concepts in mathematical research", by M.J. Barany and D. MacKenzie. It talks about various practices in math research.
Preprint from Barany's website: http://mbarany.com/Chalk.pdf
Real mathematicians write in sand.
Very often, yes. But the sand needs some very expensive preparation first.
(The first step is to turn it into silicon and make large very high quality crystals out of it, which you slice into wafers.)
(The first step is to turn it into silicon and make large very high quality crystals out of it, which you slice into wafers.)
Writing is for amateurs
I much prefer to do work standing up at a board where I can physically step back to get a literally different perspective on what I have written. The ephemerality of a chalkboard also far surpasses paper, which means there is less commitment for writing anything down – it thus feels more conducive to proper scratch work where ideas are tested and perhaps backtracked. Plus, as the article covers, there is definitely a feeling of having created something artistic when the problem is solved and the board is covered top to bottom in symbols. (Though I haven't had occasion to draw any interesting, abstract topology in my studies.)
To make up for the lack of access to chalk boards on campus during the pandemic, I built one in my room, along with an automated system for scanning flattened images of it. It took about a weekend to set up, and I've used it every day since. Some technical details for anyone who may be curious:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26872168