I saw an advert for a knitting magazine on TV last night and started laughing – but the joke’s on me; then again Andrew was joking about using math theory to sort out the Xmas lights, and when I checked the problem relates (er, kinda) to super-string theory!

Photo by Stuart Glendinning Hall

18.01. Crafty Geometry – Mathematicians Are Knitting And Crocheting To
Visualize Complex Surfaces , Science News

Excerpts: CHAOTIC CRAFTWORK. A crocheted Lorenz manifold brings the shape’s
swirls into sharp relief. Univ. of Bristol For years, Osinga and Krauskopf,
both of the University of Bristol in England, had been studying the Lorenz
manifold, a complicated surface that emerges from a model of chaotic weather
systems. The pair had created an algorithm to generate 2-dimensional computer
visualizations of the surface, but Osinga found the flat images unsatisfying.
When Krauskopf asked his question, she suddenly realized that the computer
algorithm could be interpreted as crochet instructions. “I had to try it,” she
says.

* Crafty Geometry – Mathematicians Are Knitting And Crocheting To Visualize
Complex Surfaces, Erica Klarreich , 06/12/23, Science News