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  1. Math

    Art of the Grid

    The practice of laying a grid on top of a drawing, then painstakingly copying each line of the drawing to the corresponding cell of a blank grid seems old-fashioned in these days of pervasive photocopying and electronic image manipulation. Nonetheless, the underlying idea of transferring information from one grid to another has a long history […]

    By Ivars Peterson
  2. Math

    Contra Dances, Matrices, and Groups

    Though unknown to many people, contra dancing is practiced with great devotion and abandon throughout the United States by fans of this lively dance form. What’s striking is that a remarkably high percentage of contra dancing’s practitioners are highly educated, often involved in mathematics, computers, or engineering.