I have written a blogpost about the multiset coefficient, if that's the sort of thing you might be interested in. mpaldridge.github.io/blog/multise...
09.03.2026 16:36
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I have written a blogpost about the multiset coefficient, if that's the sort of thing you might be interested in. mpaldridge.github.io/blog/multise...
"Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein"
I like the spirit of this article - worth taking some time to congratulate people who quietly made good decisions and then got on with life. Well done David Agus, Scott Aaronson, and Sean Carroll.
www.science.org/content/arti...
Piles of pieces of a disassembled 4x4 Rubik’s cube.
My son has discovered a harder puzzle than solving a 4x4 Rubik’s cube: reassembling an exploded 4x4 Rubik’s cube. Harder, and less fun.
That photo of Leeds looks like where I used to live, in a perfectly nice house in a perfectly nice area. It’s just a photo of the kind of backstreet where no-one ever goes except to put the bins out so unsurprisingly looks a bit scruffy.
I’m planning to listen to the audiobook - I’ll expect a lot of bleeping!
Thinking of my father who died a year ago today. I am grateful for this lovely obituary written by his friend Christopher McCall KC (admittedly with some input from me).
www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may...
An extract of the book Huge Numbers reading: Leaving aside a tail of nines which would take 10^10^3000 years to say, the limit of Bowers’s system is a nonecxenulti-nonecxenersi -nonecxenupi-nonecxenaxi -nonecxenoci- nonecxeneti-nonecxenoli-nonecxenovi-nonecxenermi-nonecxenuni-nonecxenasti-nonecxeniji-nonecxeneji -nonecxenali-nonecxenillion or 10^(3 × 10^(3 × 10^(3 × 10^45) - 3) +3)
Just finished another day working on the audiobook of Huge Numbers. This was one of the challenges past Richard threw at me today…
We have an electric pressure cooker which doesn’t solve your problem - it has the same dimensions as a rice cooker - but with much more functionality (you can cook many other things in it too, even simultaneously). My wife is Japanese with high standards in such matters and approves of its rice.
Really fun thread and piece at the end!
Happy birthday!
Why I am I being bombarded with adverts telling me to apply for a job as a prison warden?
I can't imagine any job in the whole world I would be worse at. And I can't think of anything I might have clicked on to give the algorithm or AI the idea this could be a good fit.
A flyer for the book Huge Numbers, A Story of Counting Ambitiously, by Richard Elwes Pre-order now for April 2026. “A phenomenal scenic tour… everything from ancient Mayan and Babylonian numerals to the scale of the universe to the dizzyingly fast-growing functions of mathematical logic. I wish I had written this book.” – Scott Aaronson
The possible scrambles for this virtual cube outnumber 10^250,000 (one followed by a quarter of a million zeroes).
Much more of this sort of thing in my upcoming book, Huge Numbers! 4/4
But there are bigger cubes than this! The largest ever solved is a virtual 256×256×256 puzzle, which a team of six solvers completed online in 2021, taking them 95 hours apread out across two months . Here’s a timelapse video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qKX...
3/4
The largest is the 7×7×7 cube, whose world record is just over 1½ minutes (it takes me most of an hour). This puzzle’s scrambles exceed 10^160, the total number of atoms there would be, if every atom in the universe was replaced by an entire universe.
youtu.be/E8YtfeLSwwI?...
2/4
There are around 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. Where might we find bigger numbes than this?
In speed-cubing competitions, solvers not only solve Rubik’s classic 3×3×3 cube (with its >10^18 possible scrambles), but other puzzles too. 1/4
I’ve just finished “The Man Who Died Seven Times” by Yasuhiko Nishizawa - a murder mystery set within a time loop.
Absolutely tons of fun if, like me, you are a fan of both genres.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man...
Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes!
"Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."
Not totally fair to all journos - Mandelson was appointed ambassador in Dec 2024, and George Parker at the FT grilled him about Epstein very soon after in Feb 2025. Mandelson’s reply was “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession and frankly you can all fuck off. OK?”
Richard in a recording studio
Richard in a recording studio
Here we go! Narrating the audiobook version of Huge Numbers.
Photos by brilliant producer Cathy who is being extremely patient while I stumble over the same sentence for the fifth time…
Golly. The World Record for the 3x3 Rubik’s cube is now under 3 seconds - and way under it too.
Congratulations to Teodor Zajder!
youtu.be/IR9vSoLUsoA?...
Blimey - relieved, but have to feel for Nepal here, after coming within one shot of beating England.
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...
Getting some funny looks waiting for my daughter’s dance class, as I attempt to follow this tutorial on pronouncing non-pulmonic consonants.
youtu.be/4e6DLwEVb6I?...
A flyer for a book Title: Huge Numbers Subtitle: A story of counting ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7. Author: Richard Elwes "Clear, informative, and immensely readable. Wonderful!" - Ian Stewart Pre-order now for April 2026
Lots more of this sort of thing in my upcoming book, Huge Numbers! [3/3]
But archaeologists occasionally find higher units carved onto monuments, each unit 20 of the last, as far as a “Kinchiltun” of over one billion days (over 1 million years) and far beyond, in some places denoting timescales of octillions (10^27) of years. [2/3]
The Mayan Long Count Calendar is a truly thing of wonder. Its basic units are one day (“Kin”), twenty days “Winal”, the “Tun” year of 360 days, the 7200 day “Katun”, and 144,000 day “Baktun” (just under 400 years). [1/3]
A badge reading "STEM AMBASSADOR 2026, 50 Hours of Engagement".
I am still delivering regular outreach sessions at schools, colleges, and elsewhere, even though my role as Holgate Session Leader for the London Mathematical Society @londmathsoc.bsky.social lapsed in 2025.
Instead I have this badge from
@stemlearning.bsky.social
... not very catchy.
A central role is played by the "viable system model": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_...
I was asked somewhere else to define "cybernetics" as it features in the book. Best I could come up with was: the study of complex systems by dividing them into a small number of parts which are treated as black-boxes, whose relationships are analysed purely through their inputs and outputs....
Ends on a cliffhanger: what headphones did you buy?
...and later by the growth of mathematical economics.
If nothing else "acountability sink" is an essential idea for understanding the modern world with its many "decisions that nobody made". [2/2]