Onederful
Here on day 11 in month 11 of the year is something appropriate for veterans of arithmetic:
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Portraits of Wildflowers 
I had to (got to?) endure my husband’s explanation of how well two-space transfers and Hamiltonian work for solving anything from polynomials to derivatives to integrals. I think that was the gist of it .. I tried to feign interest like a good friend would. Here’s to having math buddies who keep life interesting!
Shannon
November 11, 2018 at 6:28 AM
It’s an understatement to say that not everyone likes math, all the more so as the topics get advanced. On the rare occasions when I bring up math here, I try to keep simple, as in this array which is nothing more than elementary arithmetic. If nothing else, I’ll bet you appreciate the symmetry of this array.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 7:07 AM
When I see things like this, I might as well be watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat, except I have a better shot at figuring out the rabbit trick. When I first looked at it I saw the structure of an etheree, which was a neat reminder that math and poetry aren’t completely unrelated.
shoreacres
November 11, 2018 at 6:50 AM
This array isn’t as rabbit-out-of-a-hat-y as you might think. If you write out the old-fashioned multiplication of, say, 111×111, you’ll see that as you add up the columns to get the answer, there’s one more 1 each time as you move from the right toward the center, and then one less one in each column as you continue left past the center.
For some people, math is poetry!
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 10:05 AM
Not only that, when I did it by hand, I finally noticed the palindromes — on both sides. That’s really cool!
shoreacres
November 11, 2018 at 8:41 PM
Glad you got it. On the left side you have minimalist palindromes because all the digits are identical. It’s on the right side that the palindromes stand out.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 8:53 PM
How absolutely interesting: the beauty of maths! 🙂 [Which, as a student, I could never appreciate! 😀 ]
Have a wonderful Sunday,
Pit
Pit
November 11, 2018 at 8:30 AM
Now you can make up a little for your earlier non-appreciation of math, which has so many relationships as fascinating as this one.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 10:08 AM
Well, hereabouts I’m still know as the “maths whizz kid” – for whom anything beyond 3 is incomprehensible. 😀 That’s why I count like the Patagonian Aborigines: “one, two, three, very many”!!! 😀
Pit
November 12, 2018 at 10:59 AM
Don’t sell yourself short; there’s still hope.
Steve Schwartzman
November 12, 2018 at 11:46 AM
Thanks for the encouragement. 😀 I agree: I do have ten fingers to help me out with counting. 😀
Pit
November 12, 2018 at 2:44 PM
You’ve got it: fingers for figures.
Steve Schwartzman
November 12, 2018 at 4:56 PM
LOL
Pit
November 13, 2018 at 10:34 AM
I wanted to find something alliterative in German that would be appropriate for fingers and numbers. What I came up with is: zehn zu zählen. You can let me know if that sounds awkward.
Steve Schwartzman
November 13, 2018 at 4:05 PM
Go hang a salami. I’m a lasagna hog. (Read it backward.)
tonytomeo
November 11, 2018 at 8:39 AM
That’s a new palindrome for me. I’d thought of mentioning that each side of the array of equations in the post is palindromic but I decided to keep things simple and not say much.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 10:10 AM
That is what I saw in it. Is there something more that I missed?
tonytomeo
November 11, 2018 at 2:53 PM
Beyond the palindrome, on the right side there’s the way the digits go up and then back down, with each row reaching a highest value that’s one more than the row before.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 5:56 PM
that is so cool. i have so many challenges in the math arena and i love seeing things like this –
ksbeth
November 11, 2018 at 9:10 AM
A good school curriculum would expose kids to many things like this that are both cool and not hard to understand.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 10:12 AM
Absolutely
ksbeth
November 11, 2018 at 10:24 AM
Speaking of which, math uses the symbol “| |” to represent what’s called the absolute value of a number. The absolute value tells how far a number is from 0. For example, |3| = 3 and |-3| = 3 as well.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 10:29 AM
Love it, Steve!
Nan
Emma N Hampton
November 11, 2018 at 11:44 AM
A far cry from things botanical for a change. It’s the closest to musical notation you’ll ever get from me.
Steve Schwartzman
November 11, 2018 at 11:46 AM
This is really cool, and very appropriate for 11/11. I forwarded it to the two accountants in my life for their entertainment.
melissabluefineart
November 12, 2018 at 8:40 AM
They say there’s no accounting for taste, so I hope your accountants do find this to their taste. Thanks for forwarding it.
Steve Schwartzman
November 12, 2018 at 9:46 AM
They both liked it. Later I was reading a magazine and came across a story of a couple who got married at 11:11 on 11/11/11. Crazy coincidence.
melissabluefineart
November 13, 2018 at 9:50 AM
What a coincidence. In fact I had an afterthought that I’d have done better to post this at that time on November 11, 2011.
Steve Schwartzman
November 13, 2018 at 3:57 PM
Yes, I had to reread the paragraph to be sure I was seeing what I thought I saw.
melissabluefineart
November 13, 2018 at 4:50 PM
Very very interesting! I must pass this on to the mathematicians in my family.
Birder's Journey
November 13, 2018 at 7:37 AM
Neither flora nor fauna for a change. If you get any interesting comments from those family members of yours, please pass them along.
Steve Schwartzman
November 13, 2018 at 7:41 AM
At first I thought, “Oh no! A math quiz or puzzle of some kind”. You know I never liked math or science much… but this is actually something fun to see. And I “get it”!! 😀
Littlesundog
November 14, 2018 at 8:57 AM
Hooray for getting it! Schoolkids should be exposed to many more things like this.
Steve Schwartzman
November 14, 2018 at 9:46 AM
I agree about exposure to all sorts of things like this. Maybe I wouldn’t have such a low self-esteem about math if there had been some fun and interesting lessons in the classroom instead of all of that overwhelming seriousness! 😀
Littlesundog
November 14, 2018 at 3:19 PM
I think ideally there should be a mix of fun stuff and down-to-earth practice. It takes effort to get good at something, but there can be ice cream along the way.
Steve Schwartzman
November 14, 2018 at 4:26 PM