2010 calendar of lost mathematical art

Posted on 3 January 2010 by John

Rod Carvalho wrote a post this morning announcing a beautiful 2010 calendar created by Ron Doerfler. Doerfler’s blog is entitled Dead Reckonings: Lost Art in the Mathematical Sciences. The calendar is an example of such lost art. It is illustrated with nomograms, ingenious ways of computing with graphs before electronic calculators were common. The illustrations are pleasant to look at even if you have no idea what they mean.

Image via Ron Doerfler.

The Gudeermannian function gd(x) is another interesting relic of an early time. It is closely related to the Mercator projection and shows how to relate ordinary and hyperbolic trig functions without using complex numbers.

The image above shows solutions to the equation u + v + w = uvw. Here’s a post explaining the significance of that equation.

Posted in Graphics, Math

5 comments on “2010 calendar of lost mathematical art”

Gene Harris says:

3 January 2010 at 14:59

What a wonderful post. You’ve made my afternoon.

Gene
Rod Carvalho says:

3 January 2010 at 15:19

Image belongs to Ron Doerfler, not Rod Doerfler
John says:

3 January 2010 at 15:23

Thanks! I corrected the typo. And thanks for announcing the calendar on your blog.
Ron Doerfler says:

4 January 2010 at 00:30

Thanks, John, for your post on my calendar. I had never heard of the relationship you discuss among the solutions to u + v + w = uvw. Very interesting!

Ron
Anne Briggs says:

4 January 2010 at 11:22

While writing a post today about the concept of perception of time in the context of organizing for 2010:
http://www.beruly.com/?p=540
I was struck by how complex the concept of a calendar is. This calendar of lost mathematical art reminds us all how beautiful and powerful the human mind is! Perhaps the 2011 calendar could show mathematical concepts of time!

3 Pings/Trackbacks for "2010 calendar of lost mathematical art"

The grand unified theory of 19th century math — The Endeavour says:

11 November 2010 at 06:17

[...] what was “the central problem of the whole of modern mathematics” could become almost a lost art a century later. How could this be? I believe part of the explanation is that special functions, [...]
Another beautiful, interesting calendar from Ron Doerfler — The Endeavour says:

9 January 2011 at 08:30

[...] year Ron Doerfler made a beautiful calendar with images from graphical computing, charts used as computational aids before desktop calculators were [...]
Book review queue — The Endeavour says:

16 July 2011 at 12:00

[...] second MAA book is The History and Development of Nomography. Nomography is the lost art of graphical computing. A great deal of ingenuity and artistry went into producing graphics that [...]