For this week’s Math Munch, we have a re-run from four years ago– which just happened to be our first anniversary on Math Munch and the end of the previous presidential election. What were we thinking about then, and what are we thinking about now?

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Welcome to this week’s Math Munch!

Guess what? Today is Math Munch’s one-year anniversary!

We’re so grateful to everyone who has made this year so much fun: our students and readers; everyone who has spread the word about Math Munch; and especially all the people who do and make the cool mathy things that we so love to find and share.

Speaking of which…

Mathematicians have studied the popular puzzle called Sudoku in numerous ways. They’ve counted the number of solutions. They’ve investigated how few given numbers are required to force a unique solution. But Tiffany C. Inglis came at this puzzle craze from another angle—as a way to encode pixel art!

Tiffany studies computer graphics at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She’s a PhD candidate at the Computer Graphics Lab (which seems like an amazing place to work and study—would you check out these mazes!?)

Tiffany C. Inglis, hoisting a buckyball

Tiffany tried to find shading schemes for Sudoku puzzles so that pictures would emerge—like the classic mushroom pictured above. Sudoku puzzles are a pretty restrictive structure, but Tiffany and her collaborators had some success—and even more when they loosened the rules a bit. You can read about (and see!) some of their results on this rad poster and in their paper.

Thinking about making pictures with Sudoku puzzles got Tiffany interested in pixel art more generally. “I did some research on how to create pixel art from generic images such as photographs and realized that it’s an unexplored area of research, which was very exciting!” Soon she started building computer programs—algorithms—to automatically convert smooth line art into blockier pixel art without losing the flavor of the original. You can read more about Tiffany’s pixelization research on this page of her website. You should definitely check out another incredible poster Tiffany made about this research!

To read more of my interview with Tiffany, you can click here.

Cartoon Tiffany explains what makes a good pixelization. Check out the full comic!

I met Tiffany this past summer at Bridges, where she both exhibited her artwork and gave an awesome talk about circle patterns in Gothic architecture. You may be familiar with Apollonian gaskets; Gothic circle patterns have a similar circle-packing feel to them, but they have some different restrictions. Circles don’t just squeeze in one at a time, but come in rings. It’s especially nice when all of the tangencies—the places where the circles touch—coincide throughout the different layers of the pattern. Tiffany worked on the problem of when this happens and discovered that only a small family has this property. Even so, the less regular circle patterns can still produce pleasing effects. She wrote about this and more in her paper on Gothic circle patterns.

I’m really inspired by how Tiffany finds new ideas in so many place, and how she pursues them and then shares them in amazing ways. I hope you’re inspired, too!

A rose window at the Milan Cathedral, with circle designs highlighted.	A mathematical model similar to the window, which Tiffany created.
An original design by Tiffany. All of these images are from her paper.	Here’s another of Tiffany’s designs. Now try making one of your own!

Using the Mathematica code that Tiffany wrote to build her diagrams, I made an applet where you can try making some circle designs of your own. Check it out! If you make one you really like—and maybe color it in—we’d love to see it! You can send it to us at MathMunchTeam@gmail.com.

(You’ll may have to download a plug-in to view the applet; it’s the same plug-in required to use the Wolfram Demonstrations Project.)

Finally, with Election Day right around the corner, how about a dose of the mathematics of voting?

I’m a fan of this series of videos about voting theory by C.G.P. Grey. Who could resist the charm of learning about the alternative vote from a wallaby, or about gerrymandering from a weasel? Below you’ll find the first video in his series, entitled “The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained.” Majority rule isn’t as simple of a concept as you might think, and math can help to explain why. As can jungle animals, of course.

Thanks again for being a part of our Math Munch fun this past year. Here’s to a great second course! Bon appetit!

PS I linked to a bunch of papers in this post. After all, that’s the traditional first anniversary gift!