Much add about Shagsper

A month ago, by accident / in desperation, I tapped into a rich seam of books about math-for-real-life by Rob Eastaway. I enjoyed it, noted another dozen books in the seam and placed a reservation on his Much Ado About Numbers: Shakespeare's Mathematical Life and Times [2024]. For Eastaway, books are both his medium and his métier. For me, I package my copy into ~700 word Blobs. Nowadays, while it might take a tuthree hours of work to get to a final draft, launching the post gives rather effective closure. In a fortnight's time, I won't remember most of what I write this week . . . but at least I'll have a record of what was floating my boat in the present moment.

For Eastaway, his pubs are ~100x longer than mine, and he has gotten A Lot of books off his ToDo list and into the public domain. But it all amounts to about 1 million words delivered. He must have a mental or physical notebook filled with great ideas which fail at the "can I work this up as a book" stage. And he also has to believe his agent and his publisher will continue to take a punt with any new manuscript when and if he finally gets it over the line. Me not so much! Each Blob is essentially one idea, with two riffs and possibly something dreadful I dredge up from the past. And being author, editor and publisher all together means fewer barriers to publication . . . and lower standards. Short-form (paradoxically?) Blobs means far more words in the oeuvre - at least 2½ million.

Much Ado About Numbers started when the BMA British Mathematical Association had its 2022 AGM in Stratford-upon-Avon and Eastaway was scheduled to do a workshop for teachers. I bet I could fill an hour with fact and foibles about Shakespeare, quotha. [rabbit-hole alert!] A careful reading of the complete works, and at least a dozen books about The Bard, and numerous visits to libraries and museums, and interviews with experts and obsessives . . . and two years et voilá another book.

It's a valiant attempt at introducing the Arts Block to the Math Department and vice versa. I'll just share one idea which is cogent because the math element of the issue was actively in the process of getting nailed while Shakespeare was sharpening his quill to dash off a few iambic pentameters. It concerns probability while throwing dice [in a low pot-house in Stepney, or elsewhere]. The standard belief in the 1500s was that throwing 3 dice to a total of 9 was equally likely as throwing a 10 . . . because of the current sense /theory of permutations. How do I love 9 (or 10), let me count the ways:

Total 9	Total 10
1,2,6	1,3,6
1,3,5	1,4,5
1,4,4	2,2,6
2,2,5	2,3,5
2,3,4	2,4,4
3,3,3	3,3,4

Six different ways of obtaining 9, six for 10: therefore same odds. But whoa! rookie error (but only since Galileo ~ 1618 and especially since Pascal and Fermat's 1654 correspondence, 40 years after Shakespeare's death, had key countervailing insights). The three dice are different [say, colours OR the order in which they hit the table OR Bob's Tom's Kit's] and this needs taking into account.

Total 9	Total 10
1,2,6 1,6,2 2,1,6 2,6,1 6,1,2 6,2,1	1,3,6 1,6,3 3,1,6 3,6,1 6,1,3 6,3,1
1,3,5 1,5,3 3,1,5 3,5,1 5,1,3 5,3,1	1,4,5 1,4,3 3,1,4 3,4,1 4,1,3 4,3,1
1,4,4 4,1,4 4,4,1	2,2,6 2,6,2 6,2,2
2,2,5 2,5,2 5,2,2	2,3,5 2,5,3 3,2,5 3,5,2 5,2,3 5,3,2
2,3,4 2,4,3 3,2,4 3,4,2 4,2,3 4,3,2	2,4,4 4,2,4 4,4,2
3,3,3	3,3,4 3,4,3 4,3,3

Thus there are 6+6+3+3+6+1=25 ways to throw 9 but 6+6+3+6+3+3=27 routes to 10. Smart gamblers might have known or intuited it but not the rubes. Heck, it probably wasn't general knowledge even after Pascal and Fermat cranked the numbers: look at how many people bet on a nag in the Grand National because its name sounded like a dessert. Lots of folk are just unwilling to do the math.  Of course, there is an app for doing dice probs - much easier than writing out permutations in HTML.

I've returned-with-thanks Much Ado About Numbers to the Library - your turn - I recommend!