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Industrious Dice

I’m a professional mathematician. That means somebody pays me to do math. I’m also a recreational mathematician. That means you might have to pay me to get me to stop. Wearing my recreational mathe…

The link between my die-design problem and my fill-in-the-numbers puzzle goes by way of a form of polyhedral cartography pioneered by the 19th century German mathematician Victor Schlegel. For several decades Rich Schroeppel has run an email forum called math-fun for folks like me who don’t draw a sharp distinction between the two kinds of math; such mathematical luminaries as Bill Thurston and John Conway were active in the group in its early days. In planning the talk, I decided to dramatize my quirky design criterion by creating and inhabiting a pompous character who would care about the problem much more than I did, and who would view the efficiency of the die not just as an esthetic issue but a moral one.

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