Friday, February 21, 2025
– Live Presentation with Scott Vorthmann –
Session at 12 Noon Atlanta time
(check your time here)
Please join us starting 10 minutes before this session using the following button.
For published CoM presentations please visit the G4G YouTube channel
After this virtual CoM presentation on Zoom, we will meet for an informal social session in a different Zoom space where we can all see each other (see the blue button below). That Zoom meeting will start around 1pm ET.
Please join the social using the following button:
Algebra and Serendipity: The Beautiful Mathematics of vZome
I invite you to consider two strongly related kinds of beauty: the visual beauty of symmetry, similarity, and proportion, and the mathematical beauty of algebraic relationships. There are a number of geometric systems that bring these two together irresistibly, and I wrote an application specifically to explore such systems (though I could not have said that when I started). The app is called vZome, because its most obvious domain of application is modeling Zometool. I’ll talk about a number of geometric systems, how they embody the beauty I seek, and the delightful algebra that underpins them. Along the way, I’ll demonstrate some of the capabilities of vZome. I’ll also talk about how vZome has brought me into my favorite community, the Gathering 4 Gardner community.
Scott Vorthmann earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech, with a minor in Mathematics. After some postdoctoral work at Carnegie Mellon University, and a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with entrepreneurship, he worked in the enterprise software industry for 25 years. Scott’s passion for recreational mathematics was ignited by Martin Gardner’s column in Scientific American, introducing him to lifelong interests like Rubik’s cube and cellular automata. Scott is the author of vZome, a free software application for modeling Zometool and other exact geometric systems. He served on the board of the Gathering 4 Gardner foundation for four years, and helped produce the G4G14 hybrid meeting. Scott is also the co-organizer of “BAAM!”, the Bay Area Artists and Mathematicians, and enjoys hosting occasional meetings at his home.