What's new
Essays are published in groups of roughly fifteen, and a group usually opens up a subject the collection had not covered before. Between one group and the next nothing changes, so a reader who has seen the most recent group has seen everything.
14 August 2026
15 essays onlogic — a subject new to the collection
A formula is a corner of a cube
A formula about three letters is a set of eight rows. Written as a table that is a list; drawn on a cube it is a shape — and the shape is what almost every later question in this field turns out to be about.
LogicOne connective is enough
Of the sixteen ways to combine two truth values, exactly two can build all the others by themselves. Which two is not obvious, and the reason turns out to be five properties that a connective either has or escapes.
LogicThe map that puts neighbours side by side
Reorder the rows of a truth table so that neighbouring squares differ in one letter, and finding a short formula stops being algebra and becomes the problem of covering a shape with rectangles.
LogicFour circles cannot do it
Three overlapping circles cut the plane into exactly the eight regions three sets need. Four circles cut it into fourteen, and sixteen are required — so the diagram everyone draws stops working at four, and the reason is a count.
LogicTwenty-four out of two hundred and fifty-six
Aristotle's syllogisms are four sentence forms in four arrangements, which makes 256 patterns of argument. Fifteen of them are valid. Nine more become valid if you assume the things being talked about exist, and the gap between those numbers is a two-thousand-year-old disagreement.
LogicEvery row, or one column
For every person there is someone who loves them, and there is someone who loves everyone, are the same six words in a different order. Draw the relation as a grid and they become two obviously different questions — one about rows, one about columns.
LogicThe tree that closes
To prove a formula, assume it false and take it apart. Every branch ends in a contradiction, or one of them describes exactly how it could have been false — and either way the tree is the answer, drawn.
LogicTwo worlds that both obey the rules
A statement is independent of a list of axioms when there is a structure satisfying the axioms where it holds and another where it fails. That is not a claim about what nobody has managed to prove — it is a proof that nobody can.
LogicAn infinite tree has an infinite path
A tree that goes on forever, in which every node has only finitely many children, must contain a single branch that goes on forever. The proof is a rule for walking, and the rule is the whole of why finite information can decide an infinite question.
LogicThe row that is not on the list
Write down a list of infinite sequences, any list at all, and there is a rule that builds a sequence missing from it. The rule reads one entry from each row, and it is the single most reused argument in this field.
LogicA list that cannot contain itself
The set of all sets that do not contain themselves is not a set. The argument is the diagonal again, applied to a table whose rows and columns are the same objects, and it destroyed the foundations of mathematics in a postcard.
LogicThe sentence that says it has no proof
Number every sentence and every proof, and a formal system can talk about itself. Then the diagonal is available one more time, and what it builds is a sentence that is true exactly when it is unprovable.
LogicTwo injections make a bijection
If each of two collections fits inside the other without collisions, they are the same size. That sounds obvious and is not, because neither injection needs to be onto — and the proof is a rule for deciding which of the two to follow, one chain at a time.
LogicA sequence that explodes and still stops
Goodstein's sequence starting at 4 climbs past any number you care to name and reaches zero after about ten to the hundred and twenty million steps. The proof that it stops is a second sequence, running alongside it, that goes down.
LogicThe middle that is not excluded
Either it is raining or it is not. Drop that as an axiom and what is left is still a logic — one with models made of open sets and of stages of knowledge, in which a set and its negation between them miss the boundary.
Before that
Everything published earlier, newest first. Titles only — the cards are on the full listing.
12 August 2026
15 essays ondynamics
- The staircase that shows the whole orbit — dynamics
- A point that pulls, and a point that pushes — dynamics
- The road paved with doublings — dynamics
- A constant that does not care which map — dynamics
- A difference too small to draw — dynamics
- How fast two orbits part — dynamics
- The shape in every picture of itself — dynamics
- One c, one picture — dynamics
- Where Newton's method goes instead — dynamics
- Eight rules and a triangle — dynamics
- The rule that computes — dynamics
- Three gaps and no more — dynamics
- The orbit that must come back — dynamics
- Two lobes and no cycle — dynamics
- The question nobody can answer — dynamics
11 August 2026
15 essays onnumber
- The primes are what is left over — number
- There is no last prime — number
- A fraction that never closes — number
- Every fraction, exactly once — number
- How close a fraction can get — number
- One way to factor, and no other — number
- The shape of a number's divisors — number
- Numbers that are their own parts — number
- Two squares, and a lattice — number
- Every triple, on one circle — number
- Necklaces that prove a theorem — number
- Two dials at once — number
- Counting one rectangle, twice — number
- The square that cannot shrink — number
- A diagram turned on its side — number
10 August 2026
12 essays ongeometry, analysis, algebra, discrete, topology and probability
- An angle that does not care where it stands — geometry
- The plane, divided by whoever is nearest — geometry
- Euclid proves it without moving anything — geometry
- The same terms, in a different order, adding to whatever is asked — analysis
- Area is the undoing of slope — analysis
- Completing the square, by completing a square — algebra
- Numbers that wrap — discrete
- Six people at a party — discrete
- Three moves, and what they cannot undo — topology
- Nothing on a sphere can be combed flat — topology
- A walk that always comes home, until it does not — probability
- The door that was not opened — probability
6 August 2026
15 essays ongeometry, analysis, algebra, discrete, topology and probability
- The rectangle that eats itself — geometry
- A circle unrolled into a triangle — geometry
- Round is not the only way to be the same width — geometry
- A sum whose terms vanish and whose total does not — analysis
- One point's worth of information — analysis
- The slope of a single point — analysis
- The dot product is a shadow — algebra
- The directions a map leaves alone — algebra
- More things than boxes — discrete
- Four colours, and a proof nobody can read — discrete
- One sequence, counting everything — discrete
- Every corner pays for itself — topology
- Something always stays put — topology
- Twenty-three people — probability
- Bayes' theorem is a picture of a square — probability
2 August 2026
18 essays ongeometry, analysis, algebra, discrete, topology and probability
- Two squares, four triangles, and no algebra — geometry
- Every square is a stack of odd numbers — geometry
- The oldest algorithm, drawn as a tiling — geometry
- Why the list of perfect solids stops at five — geometry
- One cone, four curves — geometry
- A sine wave is a circle seen from the side — analysis
- Adding up rectangles until they stop being rectangles — analysis
- A square wave built entirely out of round ones — analysis
- The curve that is its own slope — analysis
- A matrix is a picture of what happens to the grid — algebra
- Multiplying is turning — algebra
- Seven bridges, and the invention of throwing things away — discrete
- Pascal's triangle, in two colours — discrete
- The primes on a spiral, and a pattern nobody ordered — discrete
- The surface with one side, and what happens when it is cut — topology
- A sphere is a plane plus one point — topology
- A bell curve assembled out of coin flips — probability
- Getting pi by dropping needles on the floor — probability