Twitter and What I Found There

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As an 19 year-old teenager, I feel a little bit special when I say that this is my first one-on-one encounter with twitter. Furthermore, I feel a little more special since my first twitter experience is an educational one. Currently, I am a math major, so I found two twitter feeds about math that were interesting.

What kinds of things do people on Twitter seem to be talking about, debating, arguing about or otherwise engaging in meaningful exchanges of ideas about? Give us a descriptive and clear sense of the kinds of stories you're seeing in these Twitter feeds.

From what I saw, I can narrow down a majority of the content I found on twitter into three categories: news, education, and resources. Mathematical news tweets are usually links that go to articles that discuss recently solved problems, proven theories, and controversies with discoveries and laws that have been previously proven. Probably the most interesting thing about the news category is that current events don't seem to have a lasting impact on the community; sometimes discoveries will be announced one day only to be found false the next, while other discoveries take years to find false. Mathematical education tweets are what you'd expect of an informative twitter feed. The feed includes articles and blogs about certain study tips and helpful shortcuts that can be useful for struggling students. Most of the content I found in this category seemed more geared to the high school level, usually involving tips about algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. Lastly, mathematical resources are usually links our discoveries that are meant to both hep and inform those looking for more clarification on the subject as a whole. Examples of this include websites like this three dimensional grapher or this matrix calculator.

In your opinion, what are the two most interesting conversations or stories you found in the Twitter feeds? Hyperlink us to the two different Twitter feeds and explain why you found those conversations interesting.

Math Tourist

Math Tourist is a twitter feed that mostly focuses on the happenings and applications of the mathematics in real life. One of the more interesting articles how I found posted was this one. This article explains the application of math and  patterns within something as abstract as art. Numbers and patterns are cold and straight-forward; however, seeing prevalent such concepts were in art was surprising. Furthermore, the idea of symmetry was explicitly stated numerous times. Symmetry is implicitly present in nature in things like plants, animals, and even ourselves (do you want an asymmetrical body?), but in the concept of curves in art seems a little bit of a stretch. These curves described in the article are what make this art beautiful though, patterned curves through the definitions of trigonometric principles and symmetrical shape are what give flowers their beauty, landscapes their expression, humans our individuality.

Mathematics Professor 

The Mathematics Professor is the twitter feed of a mathematics professor (mathematicians are the greatest in the creative department). He usually posts interesting resources and books that can be useful to college and graduate students, but sometimes he posts interesting links such as this one. The webpage is a massive list that defines a single unique property for almost all numbers from 0 to 9999. As stated, not every number is included, but there are a lot of numbers on this page (so many, in fact, I couldn't think of an efficient way for my laptop to count them all without creating an excel file so big my hard drive would explode. I found this article to be interesting because I'm a massive sucker for lists. Each number in this list has some sort of significance, and since there are so many of them, I can't help but feel the importance of the numerical system as a whole. Every number seems to important, and since math relates to so much in real life, I can't help but fell in importance of every little thing in the same context.

Overall, what impression do you get of your discipline based on what you saw happening on Twitter? Were the people in these feeds talking in ways you expected or did not expect, about things you anticipated they'd be talking about or things you had no idea they'd be discussing? Explain in concise specific detail.

Considering how twitter is mainly used for its social applications, I was very surprised on how much I found on twitter in such a little amount of time. There were many twitter feeds that showed an insane amount of dedication to informing the public about how their passion about math can be universally seen, and how math relates to the world. Similarly, I found math professors and associations discussing and sharing their opinions about the specifics of the subject. If anything, I expect there to be a lot of controversies considering how differently people look at the subject and its theories, but instead I found people usually respecting the opinions of others, regardless if they agree with them or not. A great example comes for the Mathematics Professor, who states in one of his tweets asks his audience: "Is there anyone who you disagree with 100% of the time but admire due to their intelligence and morality? For me its G. K. Chesteron.". This type of respect is what keeps the controversies in the subject of mathematics at a constant lull. Lastly, I was genuinely surprised by the spectrum in which the twitter feeds discussed math. From the connection math had to certain patterns that can be used in art to the online tools used to help struggling students, to the current news about all things in the subject, the twitter feeds covered a complete overview. Twitter was quite the culture shock for the stereotype I had set in my head.