Top all-time · #955
Math with Bad Drawings
Personal blog · mathwithbaddrawings.commathwriting
Math with Bad Drawings is a personal blog at mathwithbaddrawings.com about math and writing. Since 2013, 67 different Hacker News readers have linked it 102 times, most often “The State of Being Stuck”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-11, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (19) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog of math comics and essays, citing posts on tic-tac-toe, statistics, the number line, and mathematicians' arithmetic, and recommend it as a lesser-known blog.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 19 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Lover of math. Bad at drawing.
Most-linked posts?
- The State of Being Stuck8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2017-09-20
- Ultimate Tic Tac Toe6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-06-18
- Why Do We Pay Pure Mathematicians? (2015)5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-06-20
- Why Not to Trust Statistics4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2016-07-14
- Why Do We Pay Pure Mathematicians?3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-03-12
- Why I’ve Stopped Doing Interviews for Yale3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-10-02
- A Brief Case Against Limits2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-10
- Math with Bad Drawings2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-28
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-02-08
- How to Tell a Mathematician You Love Them (2017)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-02-09
What Hacker News says?
> existential angst The best (and most educational) expression of that angst that I know: https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/12/28/why-the-number-li... .
Comment linking /2016/12/28/why-the-number-line-freaks-me-out/
on ““A calculator app? Anyone could make that””Submitted Ultimate Tic Tac Toe as a story · 786 points
HN discussionHere are some relatively lesser known blogs that I can recommend, apart from the usual suspects (worrydream, John Baez etc.) https://jeremykun.com http://colah.github.io https://mathwithbaddrawings.com https://www.allendowney.com/blog/ And yeah I finally decided to inject some character into my personal website and spent a couple of days wrangling with css and made this --- http://linkdot.link . Not much content rea…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are some great personal blogs/portfolios?”Submitted How to Tell a Mathematician You Love Them (2017) as a story · 139 points
HN discussionThe difference is that we know there's something better than Java, C#, or C++ this time around. We have Typescript, Flow, Elm, Purescript, Haskell, Rust, OCaml, Idris, F*, Nim, Crystal, and more. Yes, some lessons have been forgotten that will have to be relearned, but on the whole we are improving. It's like how Andrew Whiles says[0] on how it's important to be forgetful to be a good mathematician: > It goes like t…
Comment linking /2017/09/20/the-state-of-being-stuck/
on “Sick of Ruby, dynamic typing, side effects, and object-orientation (2014)”Submitted The number line freaks me out (2016) as a story · 137 points
HN discussionthis reminds me of tic tac toe ten, where the game is a meta game of itself: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-t...
Comment linking /2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/
on “2048 in 4D”Submitted Twenty Questions Of Maddening, Delicious Geometry as a story · 133 points
HN discussionI believe the source is https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/12/16/good-mathematicia...
Comment linking /2015/12/16/good-mathematician-vs-great-mathematician/
on “Awk: The Power and Promise of a 40-Year-Old Language”Submitted Math with Bad Drawings as a story · 114 points
HN discussionWhat if you have 0.9̅4? Can we say 0.9̅5 > 0.9̅4 > 0.9̅3? More on what happens if you allow this: https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/08/13/the-kaufman-decim...
Comment linking /2013/08/13/the-kaufman-decimals/
on “0.999...= 1”Submitted Why are mathematicians so bad at arithmetic? (2017) as a story · 110 points
HN discussionCheck out this comic on "Why Not to Trust Statistics" [1]. His book, "Math With Bad Drawings" [2] has a chapter on statistics and why not to trust a single statistical measure only. [1] https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/07/13/why-not-to-trust-... [2] https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2018/05/23/math-with-bad-dra...
Comment linking /2018/05/23/math-with-bad-drawings-the-book/
on “Averages Can Be Misleading: Try a Percentile (2014)”Submitted The Case Against Galileo as a story · 59 points
HN discussionhttp://mathwithbaddrawings.com/ Assuming you're specifically demanding stick figures doing math. It tends towards middle school level math and light comedy. The mystery of "point nine repeating" which was pretty interesting in 7th grade, and a skit along the lines of four technical professions try to split the check at a restaurant. If someone knows of higher level stick figure math (aside from the linked AES discus…
Comment linking /
on “A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (2009)”Submitted Headlines from a Mathematically Literate World as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI'm so impressed with the UI and execution. Very well done. No complaints, except that it's perhaps the move timer is a little fast. I first learned about Ultimate Tic Tac Toe here[1]. Might be worth a link to that post -- it's a great explanation with surprisingly satisfying illustrations. [1]: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-t...
Comment linking /2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/
on “Show HN: Tic-tac-toe, with a multiplayer twist”Submitted Why Not to Trust Statistics as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI am happily addicted to NetNewsWire 5.0 + Feedbin I get extremely high quality content and no advertisements, tracking or pop-ups. Also, NetNewsWire is blazing fast. If you're looking for some RSS recommendations: [1] An extremely good blog for the latest in Covid related pharmaceutical research: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/ [2] Math with bad drawings: https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/ [3] A blog that anal…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite way to read online content?”Submitted The Math Ceiling: Where’s your cognitive breaking point? as a story · 18 points
HN discussionI think this article blows past several important points – perhaps unknowingly. 1. Sure, tic-tac-toe is a fantastic game for someone who needs to learn the "rewards of thinking ahead and taking the opponent’s strategy into account". Game enthusiasts (or indeed anyone above the age of 12) are very unlikely to need this lesson. 1> However, there is an interesting variant of tic-tac-toe[1] so disregarding the game comp…
Comment linking /2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/
on “Some of the most popular games get the least respect from game enthusiasts”Submitted Why I’ve Stopped Doing Interviews for Yale as a story · 12 points
HN discussionI seen this game on: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-t...
Comment linking /2013/06/16/ultimate-tic-tac-toe/
on “Tic-Tac-Toe-ception”Submitted A guide to mathematical emotions as a story · 8 points
HN discussionHere's a list I made of how reversing incentives might look for a range of games, including Soccer/Football: https://www.jefftk.com/p/playing-to-lose This was prompted by a conversation with Ben Orlin, who wrote up his version as https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2014/06/11/playing-to-lose-o...
Comment linking /2014/06/11/playing-to-lose-or-what-mucking-around-with-sports-rulebooks-has-to-do-with-math/
on “Own-Goal Football (2022)”Submitted Why Do We Pay Pure Mathematicians? as a story · 8 points
HN discussionDunno. The real numbers, for example, are in the “most things are eldritch abominations” camp[1]: the reals are uncountable, the computable reals are a(n everywhere dense) countable set[2] (that is therefore[3]) of measure zero. Not that there’s a reason to expect these cases to be similar, just that weird things do happen. [1] https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/12/28/why-the-number-li... [2] There’s a finite set…
Comment linking /2016/12/28/why-the-number-line-freaks-me-out/
on “The Halting Problem Is Decidable on a Set of Asymptotic Probability One (2006)”Submitted The Terrible Truth About Dreidel as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI think the process of applying is useful for some people At least for me, it took me outside my comfort zone. I've always just operated under my own name and spokesmodelling "a company" instead for the video created a cognitive shift that I didn't know existed. This article is probably a reasonable way to look at not getting accepted: http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-do...
Comment linking /2015/09/30/why-ive-stopped-doing-interviews-for-yale/
on “How about YC-rejected Alumni network?”Submitted Why Not to Trust Statistics as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
