Mathenchant
mathenchant.wordpress.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2016
Mathematician James Propp writes essays on accessible mathematics, such as primes, number bases, matrices, and mathematical curiosities.
What HN saysHN links it in math discussions, for example on whether 1 is prime, and one commenter enjoyed a parody piece on it.
27HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
65stories submitted
1.3Kstory points
2 months agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Prof. Engel’s Marvelously Improbable Machines4 people · 5 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 2Plus and Times Set Free3 people · 7 points · first shared 2024 · 2 comments on HN
- 3What Bad Bases Are Good For3 people · 6 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
- 4Our Fractional Universe3 people · 6 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 5Is 1 Prime, and Does It Matter?2 people · 92 points · first shared 2025 · 151 comments on HN
- 6"Jewish Mathematics"?2 people · 16 points · first shared 2024 · 23 comments on HN
- 7When 1+1 Equals 12 people · 6 points · first shared 2024 · 3 comments on HN
- 8Numbers Far Afield2 people · 5 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 9The Muffin Curse2 people · 5 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 10When .999... isn't 12 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 11Math and the Museum2 people · 5 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 12Impaled on a Fencepost2 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 13In Praise of Stupid Questions2 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 14Can Math Save Your Soul?2 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 15Seventeen Camels and Where They Can Take You2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
082349872349872 · 2023-12-19
A tangent, and (for Dr Propp) suggestion and question:
- Related: https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2023/06/16/what-is-a-matrix/
- May I suggest adding a link to https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/feed/ somewhere more easily found than via "View Source"?
- Since you (a) mentioned a working title "... Adventures of Plus and Times" and (b) have classroom experience, do you have any opinions on the following: when overloading the "high school" arithmetic operators for ring- and lattice-like structures, is it easier for people to learn (a) overloads with traditional use (ie × ↦ meet, + ↦ xor in Electrical Engineering), (b) overloads with mnemonic stories: "product makes things larger; modulo makes things smaller", or (c) any consistent overloads, because just making the abstraction leap is much more difficult than remembering any operator assignments?
ezequiel-garzon · 2026-01-06
I agree, modern definitions exclude 1 since "we lose" unique factorization. It's interesting to note [1] that this viewpoint solidified only in the last century.
[1] https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/is-1-prime-and-does-it-ma…
abecedarius · 2024-10-02
Similar. But I recently read this parody all the way through and lolled https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2024/09/17/our-fractional-universe/