This week, I attended Espace Mathématique Francophone (EMF) 20251. I gave a talk with Eric about our work on braids and string figures. It was great to meet Eric in person after working together for a little over two years. We presented, more or less, the whole story of our collaboration in two hours. It was my first time attending a French conference and giving a talk in French.
<strong>Eric Vandendriessche et Parker Glynn-Adey</strong>
La pratique des « jeux de ficelle » a pu être observée depuis la fin du 19e siècle dans nombre de sociétés autochtones de la planète, et dans les sociétés inuit en particulier (Jenness 1924, Patterson 1949, Mary-Rousselière 1969…). Elle consiste à appliquer à une boucle de fil une succession d’opérations effectuées avec les doigts (mais aussi parfois avec les dents ou les poignets), de manière à obtenir une figure. Dans cet atelier, nous proposerons une initiation à la pratique (inuit) des jeux de ficelle, afin d’en faire expérimenter les aspects algorithmiques, et de mieux rendre perceptibles les concepts mathématiques (opération, altération, transformation, itération, etc.) impliqués dans cette pratique. Enfin, nous verrons que l’élaboration d’outils de modélisation (empruntés à la théorie des groupes notamment) permettent, d’une part, de mieux saisir la nature des opérations à l’œuvre dans les procédures de jeu de ficelle, et, d’autre part, de faire des hypothèses sur la façon dont ces procédures ont été créées. </summary>
The experience of deeply immersing myself in French was wild. I totally went out on a limb, and just spoke as much French as possible. Breakfast at the hostel, posing questions of the presenters, asking for directions, ordering food, all the everyday little acts of communication, everything.
Usually, I tend to work on these week notes through out the week. Adding a bit here, a bit there, until I’ve built up a nice little pearl from my daily grit. This week, I was way too deep in to life itself to play with my computer. I wasn’t spending hours and hours at the computer writing other stuff, so not much interstitial journalling happened.
I kept on reading Pro Iŝtar in the evenings. It continues to be very adventurous and exciting. I’m about a third of the way through it. The Esperanto Sumoo has ended, but I’ll keep on reading Pro Iŝtar until the end.
The hostel had two issues of Cometbus. Now, it has one2. I really enjoyed reading a “real” zine from the Golden Age of Zines. The zine has a really strong personal vibe.
I got excited about Faulhaber polynomials and wrote a note on them. It all started by asking my friend, Mike Pawliuk, about a calculus problem. We didn’t have much to say about that original problem, but I felt like “sums of powers of integers” might make a good topic for a seminar or a math circle.
It was great to “discover” a topic for myself. I can’t quite convey the feeling in words, but it was something like being in love. While I was working on the post, and drafting stuff in my sketchbook, I happily got up before dawn and worked out calculations. During the day, I kept pondering the material and turning it over in my head. As the various pieces clicked in to place, I had a strong feeling of flow.
The piece to The Canadian Friend that I sent in back in Week Notes 7 is going through the last stages of editing. I got an e-mail from the editor with a few suggestions and agreed to most of them. This will be my first print publication with my new-old3 name, Parker Adey.
I did a lot of walking around Montreal. I felt like a proper urban ranger. The walk from the conference to the hostel was about ten minutes, and I made that walk several times a day. The big walking adventure was going to a midweek Meeting for Worship with the Montreal Quakers. It was an hour long talk from the hostel where I stayed. It felt great to walk to Meeting for an hour, worship in a park, and then walk back.
This one could just as well go under Moving, but I will count it as playing. For the last couple mornings of the conference, I got out of the hostel before breakfast and juggled in Square Saint-Louis. It was lovely to get a coffee at 0730, juggle for half hour, and make it back in time for breakfast.
I collected up various resources I heard about at the conference in this note. ↩︎
If someone was very observant, they might notice that one of the cool variegated pothos plants on the second floor has a vine that’s just a bit shorter. ↩︎
I’m strongly considering changing my name from “Parker Glynn-Adey” to “Parker Adey” to match my kids’ last name. I grew up with the name “Parker Adey” although my legal name has always been “Parker Glynn-Adey”. ↩︎
Published: May 30, 2025 @ 00:00.
Last Modified: May 30, 2025 @ 15:35.
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