Math Encounters -- Five Balls, Two Hands: The Patterns of Juggling -- Colin Wright (Presentation)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as an entertaining way to learn math through juggling.
What it is
Mathematician Colin Wright demonstrates juggling and explains the mathematics of juggling patterns, including notation that led to new throwing patterns. It is a public presentation at the Museum of Mathematics aimed at a general audience.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec DoreenMichele · 2018-12 · on “Steve Jobs hired a career juggler to teach programming to developers”
I only looked because of my fondness for this video that uses juggling to good effect to teach math in an entertaining way: [this video]
Recommends ColinWright · 2017-09 · on “Claude Shannon and Juggling”
Among the other resources is the lecture I gave at the series of lectures sponsored by MoMath: [this video] Intended for a general audience.
Recommends srean · 2026-05 · on “Braids, Hacktastic, and Rock Climbing”
Colin Wright has a fun video on braids formed by the trajectory of juggled balls. Can't seem to find it. Hope he sees this and posts. Found it [this video] On a different note do anyone of you know of a way to browse, College Mathematics, American Mathematical Monthly, Mathematics Gazette, Mathematical Intelligencer ... back issues by volume ? Without an institutional login that is. Scimag was one way. Seems to have disappeared since the Ukraine war.
Cites DoreenMichele · 2020-04 · on “John Conway has died”
HN now gets about 5 million visitors a month. In case it needs to be said for some of those folks, the OP -- ColinWright -- is also rather well connected from what I gather and part of that circle (of recreational mathematics, etc). [this video] So I imagine the mods granted the black bar in part on the strength of who posted it. They don't do so lightly and have been known to put a hold on threads in the past to wait for confirmation. They haven't chosen to do so this time and there is likely a compelling reason for that. (Example of HN waiting for confirmation: [LINK] ; [LINK] )